The January visit to the premises of M.A Ford proved to be a great success and prompted our Treasurer and President to sent their reports on the evening.
Andrew Kibler – Treasurer, sent the following:-
“On arrival we were greeted by a member of the firm, who quickly asked if we wanted anything from the burger van they had supplied. Everyone was happy to see us and gave warm friendly greetings, including the directors, who made a point of saying “Hello”. After a short speech from the directors we watched a short video of the company before splitting into small groups to take a tour of the business. It was very clear from the start how important cleanliness and quality is to this company. You could pretty much eat your meals off the floor. These guys don’t just make the run of the mill milling tools, believe me, they are some of the very best. The machine tools are very modern and I dare say expensive. Thus they are capable of working to very tight tolerances. The helix angles are designed to work specifically with the material they cut, giving the ultimate performance, though this is a closely guarded secret. As are the coatings used to prolong tool life when used for difficult materials such as Inconel. On return to the office a few of us got to watch a promotional video of high speed machining on aluminium. It showed a deep cut on what looked like a 20mm diameter cutter running at a very high feed rate. It was impressive, as was the visit as a whole. Thank you M. A. Ford…”
Andrew Kibler – LAE Treasurer & Dinner Secretary.
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Our President John Aldersley sent his report as follows:-
“The visit yesterday was excellent, even if you aren’t into machining, the place was mesmerising. We were greeted by Managing Director Chris Wagstaff at the front door, supplied with some food and drink, I had an excellent burger with salad and some yummy chips, with option to call back for more. The association was represented by young and old alike, Cameron bringing three of our new members, who at the end of the visit, we voted in by a show of hands with the members who attended and stayed (we left at around 9.35pm). There were others in attendance probably from the Leeds Manufacturing Alliance, I have asked Chris for some contact details of the MD of a cardboard box manufacturer. We went round the shop floor in groups of around six. There was far too much to take in due to the time we had, and the different processes involved. The company make milling cutters, drills, machine taps, countersink, chamfer tools and specials (the specials were being made and they explained what the tool was used for) from solid carbide rod which is supplied with e5 tolerance diameter. The pieces are cut to length using the works order, then all the required info. is laser etched onto what will be the shank. What I didn’t realise is how complex the CNC machines have become, having visited the original Ashton tools with David Corner (a family friend and a best friend of my dad) who was working for Mitchell Fox a tool distributor based in Leeds. This was around 20 years ago and Ashton had a multi axis CNC tool and cutter grinder. It was fascinating to watch this machine produce a end mill from a blank piece of carbide. So, some time on, how MA Ford have progressed is a credit to the company, some staff had stayed behind and in their own time, young and more mature engineers working hand in hand. The investment in machines, the inspection equipment, the coating plant, all were very impressive, as were all the workforce. I went round with Cameron’s dad Martin, a retired marine engineer/fitter and retired having run the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Leeds. Martin found it very interesting, as I believe all our members did. I think the evening shift was run until 10pm with an average cycle time for each cutter being around 15 to 20 minutes and with 10 machines being run by 3 skilled engineers. The staff were also checking work with a variety of inspection equipment; shadow graphs, laser measuring equipment, checking every part the cutter. The accuracy to myself being a CNC person, was astonishing working to a few microns (a micron being a .001 of a millimetre or 0.000039 of an inch) these tolerances are out of this world in manufacturing terms. The tool design is the company’s own, tried and tested and competing against Chinese imports and out performing them to boot. Some of the newer machines have auto loading by robots , which have their own programming systems ( by entering the tooling information the machine creates a program). The first cutter is then inspected and depending on the batch size a certain amount are inspected, by both the shop floor and by a separate inspection department. The company also have a state-of-the-art coating plant, with a specialist machine that can put a radius on the cutter end, then the coating process has to be seen to be believed, with a variety of extremely hard surfaces that are a few microns thick. So when added, the cutter is only .002mm bigger or 0.004mm on the tool diameter. This requires an extremely clean atmosphere, and the cutters go through a series of cleaning processes and its a no pacemaker, cotton gloves and safety specs environment. I have asked Chris for some photos * that were taken on the visit.”
John Aldersley – LAE President
Here is a link to the website of M.A. Ford:- M A Ford
( * I will post photographs on this page as soon as received. G.T. Editor)
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