Floyd Celebrates Trio Of Open Houses

3 November 2014

As the season for Open House events draws to a close, Floyd Automatic Tooling is delighted with the feedback its new products received at the Star, Citizen and Tornos shows throughout October. As the industry leading cutting tool and solution provider to the sliding head turning market, Floyd Automatic used the events to further cement its excellent working relationship with the three leading sliding head machine tool suppliers.

As Floyd Automatic Tooling's Managing Director, Mr Richard Floyd comments: "This year Citizen Machinery is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It creates a period for reflection, knowing that our company, and also the former company I worked for, have worked with Citizen since it was first established in the UK. Fellow director Eric Chamberlain and I, have both been working with Citizen's Geoff Bryant since the 1980's, providing collets, guide-bushes and cutting tools. Whilst we would like to extend our best wishes to Citizen as they celebrate this landmark, it also shows the value of relationships within the industry."

Whilst building relationships based on friendship, longevity, trust and ethics is all well and good; Floyd Automatic has also established these long term relationships through continually delivering innovative products and technical expertise that is backed by a cost effective and efficient service. The recent round of Open Houses once again demonstrated this, with each event providing an opportunity to showcase the MultiDec Lube and Hirt line of coolant delivery systems as well as the Applitec ZX range of turning inserts.
The Hirt line of stainless steel lockable coolant hoses has been a revelation since its launch, solving the problem of continually moving and frequently breaking coolant hoses. With the work envelope of a machine tool being a hostile environment, the robust and corrosion resistant Hirt Line is a welcome addition to most machine tools. Primarily aimed at sliding head turning centres, Floyd Automatic has noted an increasing interest level from users of machining centres.

As Mr Floyd says: "We have found that with the speed and kinematics of modern machining centres, coolant hoses frequently move and this directs fluid away from its intended path. The result is constant operator intervention. This is no longer necessary with the Hirt Line."

Another solution from Floyd for directing coolant on its intended trajectory within a compact sliding head work area, is the new line of MultiDec Lube toolholders. The MultiDec Lube directs high pressure coolant to the cutting edge to improve tool life, surface finishes and eliminate issues caused by swarf build-up. Most importantly for the end user is the improved process stability that minimises downtime and increases productivity by a considerable margin.

The innovative MultiDec Lube is based upon a clamping wedge design that can easily and quickly replace the original clamping wedge. The MultiDec Lube clamping wedge can be coupled directly to the coolant supply via connectors that are on the rear or the side of the MultiDec Lube to improve accessibility for the user. Conventional toolholders without an internal cooling facility can still be used as the coolant is delivered through the clamping wedge. Using this coolant delivery system, the user is not committed to any one brand of insert tooling.

Whilst the coolant delivery systems generated significant interest at the three open house events, it was the Applitec line of ZX turning inserts that drew the crowds from a cutting tool perspective. This line has been developed to deal with long swarf fragments that are generated by problematic material types in compact work envelopes. Whereas traditional X-geometry inserts are not ideal for swarf breaking, the Applitec ZX line incorporates sharp cutting edges that can control swarf particularly well. This is credit to innovative tool geometries that have been generated by a unique laser processing technique. The result is excellent surface finishes, exceptional precision and tool life with outstanding chip control.