RFQ Award - CNC Turning Centre

The National Physical Laboratory's [NPL] engineering department requires a new CNC Turning Centre to replace an existing machine and to complement the existing range of machine tools.

The turning centre must interface with and be fully compatible with existing CAM application software tools, FeatureCAM and Autodesk Fusion. The control must also provide effective state of the art interactive conversational on machine programming.

The nature of manufacturing at NPL requires that machine tools are effective for production of one-off and low number batches of components with a wide variety of size, geometry and materials, often with demanding tolerance specifications.

Parts are made in a wide variety of material specifications and include a range of metals and non-metallic materials. Metal specifications include aluminium alloys, stainless steels, titanium, carbon steels, coppers, brass, nickel based super alloys and other special metal alloys.

The range of plastic materials to be machined include various grades of nylon, Polyaryletheretherketone (PEEK™), PTFE, acetal, acrylic, polycarbonate and a variety of other specialist plastics and plastic composites.