The term ‘one-stop-shop’ is banded around the subcontract manufacturing industry far too flagrantly, and it’s not until you find a company like Woodbrook Precision Ltd that you can truly understand what a single source solution provider looks like. The Lancashire manufacturer ventures beyond rivals’ services and continually invests in the latest machine tools fully supported by advanced cutting tool solutions from CERATIZIT UK.
Located in Ashton-Under-Lyne on the Northeast edge of Greater Manchester, the plant list at Woodbrook Precision includes a complete array of manual and CNC 3 to 5-axis machining centres and multi-axis turning centres from renowned brands such as Mazak, XYZ, Leadwell and Bridgeport. The state-of-the-art plant list is supported by services such as grinding, plating, shearing, profiling, welding, laser cutting, gear cutting, heat treatment, powder coating and more. Rightly proud of its comprehensive services and recent investment in Mazak machine tools, Managing Director Stephen Hogg from Woodbrook Precision says that CERATIZIT has been instrumental in enhancing the productivity of the new equipment.
The second-generation business was founded by Stephen’s father more than 35 years ago. When Stephen bought the company 16 years ago, Woodbrook operated out of a small unit with a single CNC turning centre and a series of manual mills—all supported by various cutting tool vendors, with WNT (member of the CERATIZIT Group) being one of the many. However, as Stephen has applied his vision and determination to the company, Woodbrook has evolved with a 2018 move to an 18,000sq/ft facility three times larger than the previous site. Plans are also afoot to add another 10,000sq/ft. This growth has stemmed from the business’s progress in general subcontract machining into the oil & gas, aerospace, rail, and motorsport sectors.
Woodbrook has evolved the sophistication of its machine tool purchases to serve these industries. Initially investing in 3-axis Mazak VMCs with rotary tables and turning centres with live tooling, more recent acquisitions have included two 3.5m bed Mazak VTC800/30SR 5-axis machines and a 5-axis Mazak CV5-500. This has seen work for overhead cranes, rail, and general subcon evolve to aerospace jigs and fixtures, critical subsea valves and manifolds, motorsport brake callipers, engine components and more. With an evolution driven by the expanding capabilities of its machine tools, Woodbrook has needed to rely more heavily on the expertise of its cutting tool suppliers. As the business has shifted from machining steel and aluminium to stainless, super duplex, titanium, inconel, carbon fibre, hastelloy and much more – CERATIZIT UK has risen through the ranks to be the cutting tool partner of choice.
Alluding to why CERATIZIT UK is number one, Stephen Hogg from Woodbrook says: “Over ten years ago, CERATIZIT was one of many suppliers, and as I took control of the business, it became evident that CERATIZIT had the best-performing tools and their service was far beyond anything else. As we continually ventured into more complex work and more challenging materials, we needed greater support and new machining strategies; CERATIZIT UK’s Technical Sales Engineer Matthew Darbyshire has been with us all the way to provide the solution. It’s been seamless, and it’s pointless going elsewhere as Matt makes it so easy and ‘painless’ for us.”
Recalling the early days of working with Matt from CERATIZIT UK, Stephen adds: “With numerous sales reps continually calling upon us, we asked Matt for a few tools to trial. The tools initially performed well, but for the relationship to blossom to a position where we now have thousands of CERATIZIT tools, that has been built on tool performance, product range diversity, supply chain continuity and most importantly, technical support, service and trust that has instantly been available. I can WhatsApp Matt with any drawings and queries and he’ll deliver a solution imminently.”
The Productivity Gains
As a machine shop that typically manufactures prototypes in small batches, tracking continuous tooling improvement isn’t always the priority for Woodbrook. However, you don’t have to look far for quantifiable results with CERATIZIT products. Stephen adds: “We recently implemented the CERATIZIT facing and parting-off tools, and it reduced the cycle time on a 400-off job from 1 minute 58 seconds to 1 minute 26 seconds. We also applied the Dragonskin CircularLine DLC-coated solid carbide end mills with impressive results. The Dragonskin tools have cut cycle times on an aluminium part from 3 minutes to 1 minute 20 seconds whilst more than doubling our tool life.”
“On another 100-off repeat order stainless steel aerospace fixture, we needed to reduce our cycle times to maximise margins and reduce costs. Matt introduced a CERATIZIT UK high feed indexable end mill, and this reduced our cycle times from 38 to 26 minutes per part, with a tool life improvement of more than 20%. This was a significant saving on a long-running job.” However, the most significant saving wasn’t from the cutting tools….
Workholding ‘Made in Sheffield’ Grips Imagination
With the 100-off stainless job running through the business frequently, Woodbrook set up six vices in a line on the spacious 3.5m bed of its Mazak 5-axis VTC800/30SR. When each surface and cycle was completed, an operator would re-set the job to process the next face. With a total of four operations, the process was laborious. Stephen spoke with Matt from CERATIZIT, and the way forward was a bespoke workholding solution that was ‘Made in Sheffield’ at the CERATIZIT UK Technical Centre and Headquarters.
Stephen visited the CERATIZIT stand at MACH 2024. He realised that the only cost for CERATIZIT’s bespoke service was the price of the aluminium tombstone billet and the cost of the four ZSG4-125 Centric vices that connect to the zero-point single riser tombstone system. Immediately impressed, Woodbrook Precision ordered a pyramid system to clamp smaller parts in its 5-axis Mazak CV5-500. The ZSG4-125 Centric vices with serrated jaws enabled Woodbrook to clamp on as little as 3mm of stock, permitting the subcontractor to hit all five sides of the stainless parts with confidence in the high-torque clamping forces of the vice. With five faces machined in a single operation, the following operation was to turn the parts over to complete the sixth surface. This reduced this 100-off repeat job from a four to a two-operation process, saving an additional 10 minutes per part.
As Stephen concludes: “This job took over one hour per part from start to finish. The tombstone and Centric ZSG vices immediately took more than 10 minutes off each part, with peripheral savings being longer running times without operator intervention. Reduced set-ups also improved our precision, repeatability and consistency over an entire batch of parts. Furthermore, we work 12 hours a day, six days a week, and the tombstone enabled us to set up a batch of four parts at the end of a shift to run unmanned for a couple of hours – giving us further savings.”
“We are now using CERATIZIT for everything from our back-ends and collets to solid carbide and indexable tools ranging from drills and threadmills to end mills, turning and parting tools. We never thought we’d be turning to CERATIZIT for our workholding solutions, but just like the cutting tools – the quality and performance of the workholding solutions that come with a ‘Made in Sheffield’ brand is far superior to anything else we’ve encountered.”
