With batch sizes ranging from 10-off through to 1000s off the management team at Constant Group took the decision to make a significant investment of £1 million in fibre laser and press brakes and, while these machines may have been the main focus, the arrival of a Timesavers 12-600-W deburring and finishing machine from Ellesco has also made a significant impact on the efficiency when graining stainless steel materials.
Constant Group provides a full design to manufacture service that provides a sub-contract fabrication service, with customers across many industry sectors, including pharmaceutical, food processing, enclosures and packaging.
The family business started as Constant Aluminium Supplies, evolving over the past 50 years into what it is today; a full-service supplier of fabricated parts and assemblies operating from 60,000 ft2 premises with the latest manufacturing technology.
“The Timesavers machine was purchased specifically to process stainless steel, which we targeted as an area of operation that we could make the greatest efficiency,” says Matthew Garlick, joint managing director, Constant Group. “Prior to the arrival of the 12 Series machine we were hand graining all of these parts, which could take 20 minutes each, we now achieve that in seconds, with consistent quality.”
The Timesavers 12-Series is amongst the smallest machines in the range and can be specified with working widths of 225 mm or 600 mm, the latter being specified by Constant Group, which also specified the basic configuration with an abrasive belt for graining and removing vertical burrs.
The machine can be equipped with a cylinder brush or rotating disc to remove side burrs and for edge preparation. Sheet between 1 and 75 mm thickness can be processed with simple control allowing work to flow under the belt at between 3 and 9 m/min to achieve the exact finish required. The simplicity of the Timesavers 12 Series is also playing another important role for Constant in that its ease of use allows anyone to set and operate it, freeing up skilled employees to work on higher-value operations.
“Since the arrival of the Timesavers machine it has been running eight hours a day minimum with no issues whatsoever and the ability to have anyone running it is a big advantage – where if we had staff absent we knew we could continue to process work thanks to the simplicity of the Timesavers machine. Beyond this we are also seeing significant savings in consumables compared to manual graining where the lack of consistency between operators meant increased spend on abrasive pads, we are now in total control of that aspect of the business.”
The choice of Timesavers by the Constant Group was driven by the reputation for ease of use and build quality as well as the interaction it had with Ellesco, the UK and Ireland distributor of the Timesavers range.
“The conversations we had gave us the reassurance we needed to make the investment,” says Matthew Garlick. “And, while we only specified the entry-level machine, the experience we have had has certainly given us the confidence to go for a higher specification as we identify further areas of growth for the business.”
