Meltham Mills Move Up a Gear
Meltham Mills Engineering Ltd manufacture, heat treat and surface finish precision components, such as gears and shafts, for earthmoving vehicles. To accommodate a growing order book for components that incorporate performance enhancing surface finishing and help meet the on going demand for cost reductions from its customers Meltham decided to invest in two new Vixen machines.
Meltham have chosen a shot peening machine based on Vixen's very popular Jetair range and a wetblast machine with mini tumbler. The shot-peening machine is fitted with directional nozzles to focus the shot on critical surfaces; this has reduced cycle times and significantly reduced the energy requirement over the old wide-angle blast system. The mini tumbler on the wet blast machine allowed smaller parts to be produced faster with lower operator effort.
Nigel Dyson (MD of Meltham Mills) said that the reason they chose Vixen over any other degreasing and blast-cleaning company was due to
"The competitive quote and speedy delivery times"
The performance of the machines exceeded Meltham's expectations. The cost totalled approximately £30,000, but the short pay back period more than justified the investment. The continued growth of the company, which the new machines will enhance, has seen significant levels of recruitment. The experienced operators find the machines much easier to use and the requirement for protective equipment reduced because of the modern design to the latest standards. New operators find the machines easy to master with the pre-programmed settings and easy loading.
Meltham Mills now achieve higher output but with reduced operator effort since the installation of the Vixen machines, a win win situation. Nigel Dyson proudly said
"before we would struggle to meet all our customers demands but now we have the capability to treble our output."