Arcing towards excellence

arcing-towards-excellence
arcing-towards-excellence

Ed Hill discovers what the latest investment in its composite manufacturing facilities means for product development specialist, ARRK Europe.

A testament to the growing confidence in the composites industry can be seen in product development specialist ARRK Europe making substantial investment upgrading and refurbishing its composites technical centre in Nuneaton.

The company held an open day in February to demonstrate its latest technical capabilities. The investment comes following increasing demand from clients in the automotive, railway, marine and aerospace sectors.

The event brought together customers, suppliers, press, industry associations and government bodies to see the new facilities.

ARRK Europe is part of the global group headquartered in Osaka, Japan. As a whole the organisation incorporates 37 companies worldwide, employing around 5,000 people.

In the UK the company has five sites at Gloucester, Teesside, Basildon, Petersfield and Nuneaton, specialising in various areas including rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing, technical recruitment, design engineering, tooling and moulding production for the plastics industry. Nuneaton is the main centre for the company’s composites expertise.

After restructuring its operations ARRK is focusing on its most profitable long term commercial ventures. The composites side of the business has previously performed well and the company has ambitious plans to develop this arm of the group further. As well as upgrading and investing in new equipment, it has also recruited additional technical personnel.

The technical investment at Nuneaton includes £120,000 upgrading the company’s two autoclaves with CNC controls, creating climate-controlled studios and new resin infusion technology. Aside from composites, the Nuneaton site’s other capabilities include large multi-axis CNC machining of composites and metals, foundry tooling manufacture and turnkey blow mould and tooling solutions.

Anthony O’Neill, general manager at Nuneaton comments: “The forecast for growth in the composites sector is very high. We assessed the potential for business in each area of the sector, but rather than concentrate on one we decided we could be bold and target all of them. This has created a new awareness about our company and our capabilities and we believe contributes to the reason we are being favoured by our customers. Many see the benefits the crossover between sectors such as aerospace, marine and automotive has for developing new parts and processes. There are many techniques that are transferable to both.”

As a specialist in product development, engineers at ARRK are used to creating bespoke solutions and manufacturing relatively small volumes. However, the new investment at Nuneaton is a step towards producing larger part volumes, particularly for the company’s automotive customers such as Jaguar Land Rover.

The company’s expertise in the automotive field was demonstrated at the open day event in the form of a Noble M600 supercar, for which ARRK provides the carbon fibre chassis and body panels and an Aston Martin Q option sports car which features ARRK body components and trims. Also on display was the BAC Mono ultra-lightweight single seat sports car. ARRK has worked with the Mono’s designers to develop higher quality and more productive moulds for the carbon fibre body panels and structural elements of the car.

“We engaged with BAC and offered a redesign solution for the tools in line with the costs that they required. Some of the design and engineering for the car was also changed within the programme,” continues O’Neill. “We are still at the development phase of this project, but will soon be making the transition into much higher production.”

ARRK has also invested in resin infusion and new Rampf close contour paste technology. The system enables the production of more cost effective mould tooling by applying a resin/aluminium paste to a substrate such as polystyrene. Once the paste has hardened it can be machined to produce an extremely smooth mould able to produce many more parts than traditional tooling block or model board.

Phil Sherwood, composites technical manager at ARRK explains: “We had seen the paste being used before but at that time it had not proved to be dimensionally stable, so we challenged the paste manufacturer to come up with a solution that would able to withstand many more cycles in production. With that solution in place we are confident that we can offer a much higher return per mould. It produces a featureless surface that is very good to work with and in terms of the durability we expect moulds will last five to six times longer, greatly reducing tooling costs. There is also far less mass required than with a traditional mould tool with an egg box like support structure that the industry is familiar with. With the Rampf system, we should be able to produce much larger components than we have been able to do in the past.”

A major reason for ARRK’s investment in its autoclaves is increasing production for aerospace customers. The company already supplies parts for tier 1 companies in the sector and is working towards AS9100 accreditation to enable it to attract more business.

“The CNC autoclaves are now AS standard which is a big help when supplying the aerospace sector. They give us total control and traceability of our components and that in turn will allow us to make the move into supplying more flying parts,” says O’Neill.

So the future does look bright for ARRK. The company has also adopted Six Sigma quality management principles to improve production from management down to the shopfloor giving staff a greater sense of involvement in the company’s future and its technical advances.

Sherwood concludes: “It is all about quality, control and on-time delivery. The reason we are getting more interest and support from the OEMs is that we have really examined how we repeat the manufacturing process on a daily basis. We have looked at issues such as multi-curing in our autoclaves and maximising the capacities that we have on the shopfloor through multiple sets of tools. It is these intelligent and planned solutions that we believe give us the edge over our competitors. We don’t have the same peaks and troughs in production that you see in some areas of the composites industry. We have geared the business model on consistent 24/7 production.”

www.arrkeurope.com

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