🎧Quickgrind slots into production at TSP

Founded in 1945, TSP Engineering was primarily established to serve the iron and steel industries by manufacturing mining machinery, mine cars and ingot moulds. Now, the company located on Britain’s Energy Coast in Workington delivers high-quality, innovative heavy engineering solutions to nuclear, oil and gas, defence, renewable energy and construction sectors. The company recently encountered a challenge with one of its nuclear and reactor engineering customers – this led the company to find its solution from Quickgrind.

With a colossal shop floor of 20,000m², TSP has the facilities to handle some of the biggest engineering and steel fabrication projects in the UK and beyond – but when it came to finding the right cutting tool solution, the company opted for a solution from the Tewkesbury based cutting tool experts.

TSP was met with a nuclear reactor challenge and what drew the company to Quickgrind was its ability to offer non-standard length carbide tooling that won’t be found in catalogues or brochures. During an initial consultation, Lewis Straughton, the Production Manager of TSP Engineering, revealed the company had always had a problem finish milling slots because the tools could never push to the required length.
In the past, TSP had tried high-speed steel end mills with flute lengths upwards of 220mm. However, they had issues achieving the required tolerances. To overcome this, TSP reverted to the chain boring method. The critical nuclear components required slots machined to a tolerance of +/-0.1mm at depths of 220mm. However, the existing tools were witnessing pushing-off problems as well as creating spindle issues. This was not acceptable for the machining of high-value components. Retaining the in-house machining of the £2.5m contract was of paramount importance for TSP and risking the scrapping and re-working of components worth more than £500,000 was not an option.

After partnering with Quickgrind, the two companies worked closely to develop a cutting tool solution and a suitable machining strategy that could finish the slots to the high surface finish and tolerance requirements.

By adopting a specialist solid carbide end mill from Quickgrind with a new toolholder, TSP could achieve the required surface finishes and tolerances whilst the exceptional quality of the Quickgrind tools delivered consistently high performance and service life. As a manufacturer that has immense pride in its quality and certifications, TSP is ISO: 9001, ISO: 3834 Part 2, ISO: 1090 at execution level 4, ISO: 14001 and ISO: 45001 certified. The company also claims to be the first in the world to achieve the ISO: 19443 standard.

Not only did the Quickgrind long flute end mills resolve the issues of meeting the tight tolerances, evacuating swarf from the deep slots and eliminating the spindle issue – the tools also delivered astounding cycle time savings. The Quickgrind end mills reduced the 260-hour cycle time to just 16 hours, yielding cycle time reductions of 244 hours per component.