Multi-Spindle Turning
Multi-Spindle technology has been around since the 19th century but still plays a major role in manufacturing today. They are highly efficient production machines for turned components.
Typically a Multi-Spindle machine has 6 spindles. 3 meter lengths of bar are fed into the machine, clamped, and an automated cycle indexes the spindles to 5 working stations. For the production of brass components, each spindle revolves around 2,500 RPM. With bespoke tooling in each station, the machine feeds the tools into the revolving bar.
Each station progressively shapes the component until the machine reaches the final station. The component is usually a finished article and is cut off and the process is repeated. Currie & Warner's average cycle time for a complete component is 36 sec's. However, because each spindle produces a component the machine actually generates 1 component every 6 secs.
Setting up the machine can take days to complete depending on the complexity of the existing job to the new job. Individual attachments require setting, for example, to add a thread or polygon turning attachment. Therefore, to cost-effectively amortise set up costs, Multi-Spindle machines usually require production runs of over 10,000 pieces to make the Multi-Spindle option competitive.
The machines are very repeatable. With tooling techniques developed by Currie & Warner, we are able to achieve very close tolerances over large batch production.
Over the years Currie & Warner has gained extensive knowledge of how to produce high volume, high quality, complex brass turned parts in a single operation. From engineering a special attachment to machining three components at one time, you can be assured we investigate all possibilities to reduce cost.
Continual improvement is an important area for Currie & Warner. After the manufacture of every batch, we analyse production efficiencies and investigate to see if we can produce the components better and more efficiently the next time.
Currie & Warner have over 50 Wickman Multi-Spindles across two production facilities with capacity ranging from Ø8mm (5/16") to Ø57mm (2 1/4").