Located at the foot of Snowdon, Llanberis-based Vixen CNC Ltd is a specialist manufacturer of PPE equipment and height safety systems. With a plant list that includes a range of sliding head turning centres, turning centres from Mazak and Nakamura and Mazak machining centres, one of the latest acquisitions is the new Miyano ANX42SYY from Citizen.
Founded in 1999, the ISO: 9001 manufacturer that sits in the beautiful Snowdonia National Park is a typical subcontract manufacturer with customers in the automotive, marine, military, medical, motorsport, and offshore power generation sectors – but what sets this company apart is its investment in high-end machine tools. Commenting on its latest investment, Ricky Jones from Vixen CNC says: “We wanted to bridge the gap between our investment in fixed head and sliding head machines – that is why we have just bought a Citizen Miyano ANX42SYY.”
“On a 316 stainless component that we are making out of 1.5-inch diameter bar for the oil and gas industry, the new technology on the Miyano ANX42SYY has made the running of the part a lot better. This job used to get produced on our sliding head machines, but now that it is done on the Miyano ANX42SYY, we are getting improved unmanned running, the tool life is significantly improved – and the job just runs a lot better,” says Ricky.
“Another reason why we invested in this Miyano ANX42SYY is because of the FANUC CNC control system. All of our sliding head machines are FANUC controlled, which has made the programming a lot easier to copy over from the sliding head machines to the new Miyano machine. The intuitive control has features such as a display for the power output and also the regenerated power that it is accumulating. This sits well with our business and how we have also just invested in solar panels on our roof. Since March, we have reclaimed 45MW,” says Ricky.
Looking at another challenging component where the Miyano ANX42SYY has made an improvement, Ricky continues: “On this job, I had an issue with swarf building up on one of my drills. When I first set the job up, I had to stop it every 10 parts. Now, I can run the LFV swarf control system and the drill will process 400 parts without removing the swarf once. I have had full backing from the Managing Director on this machine. Only the other day, he asked me not to run lights out because he was nervous that something would go wrong. I told him that the job would be fine and we could run lights out – the job worked perfectly overnight and unmanned. This machine is the first large project that I have been given and the support that I have received from Citizen has been excellent. Obviously, living in North Wales which is quite far from most manufacturing industries in the UK – Citizen have always been at the end of the phone. This is particularly the case with Stewart, the applications engineer who has always been helpful every time I have had an issue.”
“One example of a challenge the Stewart to help me with was an LFV issue. The LFV wasn’t working because one feature was not turned on, I phoned Stewart late that evening and by 10am, the issue was resolved and the machine was running. The improved cycle times and the unmanned running has been the thing that has impressed me the most with the Miyano. This makes my job a lot easier as I can get parts off the machine and out of the door sooner than we initially planned. We can then get the next job onto the machine. At the end of the day, ‘time is money’ and if we can get things off the machines quicker, that benefits our business,” concludes Ricky.