One Hundred Percent CMM Inspection of 500 Parts Become Almost Fully Automated
One-O-Five Precision was founded by Richard Pratt in January 2021 and has grown to be an up-and-coming name in the Cumbrian, UK Engineering Sector. After gaining qualifications and on the job training in machining and building up a reputation for his work whilst employed at Bendalls Engineering, Richard’s dream was to create and grow his own company. One-O-Five was named after Richards keen interest in Motorsport, in particular, Motocross and gives remembrance to his close friend Lee Tolson, someone who he looked up to dearly. Lee raced under the number 105 and was well known in the Cumbrian Motocross Community.
Starting with just a 46m² workshop, Richard’s first purchase was an XYZ 710 Mill and then a XYZ CT52 lathe. In October 2021 he moved into the bigger ‘Unit 2’. During the 1½ year occupancy of unit 2, life was extremely busy, Richard explains: “I was working 90-hour weeks, doing whatever it took to satisfy customer requests. It was commonplace for me to travel 300 miles to pick up a part or piece of material just to get a job done. We’ve now moved to a purpose-built 750m² factory, Unit 1. We’ve admin offices, staff canteen, meetings rooms and enough space to expand in the coming years.”
The One-O-Five team has grown since 2021, with Adam Warwick joining in 2022 as Workshop Foreman and Louie Burns as Apprentice. 2023 saw Scott Davidson join the team, bringing 10+ years of machining experience. He was also joined by Holly Moss as the Office Manager, bringing 12 years’ experience of Office Management and QHE Systems in engineering, and then James Baxter as another apprentice in October. 2023 has also seen One-O-Five Precision complete their Quality Manual and are certified with NQA and UKAS accredited to ISO 9001:2015.
Working with the local technical college and the Cumbrian Manufacturing Alliance has been a great enabler, Holly Moss explains: “We teamed up with Lakes College to overcome the skills gap in the area. We’ve recruited two apprentices (Louie Burns and James Baxter) and they’ve been a great asset to the business. The Cumbrian Manufacturing Alliance has enabled a small business like us take on contracts in the nuclear power industry, that would have been extremely difficult to be awarded without their fantastic support.”
It was the 100% inspection and quality assurance requirements of new nuclear power contracts that generated the need for a CMM. Previously, it would take 80 hours (4 man-days) to complete the 100% inspection of 500 parts with conventional handheld gauges, verniers and micrometers. Richard visited the UK’s MACH exhibition, with example part in hand, to see who could help. He visited all the CMM brands exhibiting at MACH and settled on Aberlink after a very quick and easy demonstration.
Richard explains: “We were immediately convinced that Aberlink was right for us because it is so quick and easy to use. The part I had with me was inspected in no time at all and the Aberlink technical sales manager explained exactly how we could use the Aberlink CMM to measure multiple parts fully automatically. We settled on the Halo CNC CMM (10.12.08), with Renishaw PH10T-TP20 probe system and the Aberlink Programming from CAD software module. Not only being the best value-for-money CMM out there, we save more money by not having to pay for ongoing software maintenance, which means the running costs are also limited to only the annual service and calibration of our CMM”
The Aberlink Halo CNC CMM is a belt-drive version of the state-of-the-art, linear-drive, Horizon CMM. The Halo CMM has been launched to fill an important gap in Aberlink’s price/performance CMM portfolio. Aberlink customers that do not need the metrology performance of the linear-drive Horizon CNC CMM can now opt for the belt-drive machine. Although not as accurate as the Horizon CNC CMM, the Halo machine does have a first term error of 1.8µm when fitted with the SP25 scanning probe. It is available in four different sizes, with a significantly lower overall height than the Horizon CMM. This enables it to be installed in metrology laboratories with lower ceilings. The belt-drive system is also better suited to production environments, so the Halo CNC CMM can also be used where it is needed.
Since having the Halo CMM, the 100% inspection of 500 parts has become almost fully automated, Richard explains: “We now load 50 parts on the bed of the CMM and hit the go button. We can get on with other work while the Aberlink CMM inspects all the parts, with fully collated inspection reports for each part at the end of the run – It has transformed how we work! We’ve freed up our engineering resource and increased our engineering capacity to look for new work.”
In summing up, Richard has this to say: “Our aspirations are to increase the sectors that we work in and collaborate with local companies and organisations. We would also like to explore the use of unmanned robotic machining and see One-O-Five grow alongside the use of new and advancing technology. With the belief that continual improvement, working safely and taking responsibility for our work are key elements to the company, #team105 have come together to bring a family feel to a growing business. Our vision is to become a leader in the Cumbrian area for quality of product and development of machining capabilities.”
For more information: www.aberlink.com
