How much is a set of wheels on an Aston Martin likely to set you back? One man who knows is Barrie Hall of Advanced Engineering (UK) in Birmingham.
“We machined the prototype wheels for the Aston Martin One77, which is £1.2 million worth of car,” says Mr Hall. “The wheels were machined from solid aluminium with each one taking a week to manufacture. A full set costs the same as an average family car.”
Mr Hall clearly loves talking about the business he has helped to develop over the last twelve years and the Aston Martin story is testament to the type of work the company undertakes on a regular basis. “70% of our core business is low batch, low volume, and prototype parts machined from solid, everything from gear sticks to number plates, interior trim to suspension arms,” he reveals. “Coupled to this we machine castings which include cylinder heads and blocks, cam carriers and various pumps, both in prototype and production quantities.”
The Advanced Engineering (UK) story started in 1979 when the company was primarily involved in tool and die making and the manufacture of walking aids for children with Cerebral Palsy, amongst other ad hoc products. However, it all began to change when one of the most famous names in the automotive sector called.
“Our move into the sector began when we were approached by Lotus Lightweight Structures to produce prototype aluminium extrusions for Aston Martin,” Mr Hall explains. “We now work for some of the biggest names in this industry including Aston Martin, Prodrive, Bentley, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes HPP and Jaguar Land Rover.”
Today, Advanced Engineering (UK) specialises in multi-axis precision machining mainly in aluminium, but also cast iron, steel and plastics. The company has 35 employees with a turnover in excess of £3 million per annum and makes regular investments in machine tools – mainly from Yamazaki Mazak.
A quick tour around Advanced Engineering (UK)’s machine shop illustrates the scale of the investment made. “We’ve invested £5 million in the last five years, predominantly with Mazak,” Mr Hall reveals. “We have a range of machines in the workshop which can produce everything our customers require via 5-axis twin pallet machining centres like the Variaxis 630 through to the VTC 800/30 SR with its 3m machining capacity and a new Hyper Variaxis which has linear drives on all axes allowing for high speed machining.”
The company’s first Mazak machine was a Variaxis model equipped with a twin pallet and 40 tools. “We quickly learnt that 40 tools are not nearly enough,” Mr Hall adds, “so we’ve gone from 40 to 80 and 120 tools per machine. You can’t cost cut on tooling – once you’ve bought these machines you can easily add another £40,000 with tooling costs.”
In fact, it is a high profile Mazak client that provided the inspiration behind the latest investments made by Advanced Engineering. “McLaren are an important customer of ours and we were very interested in how they were developing their own machine shop,” Mr Hall advises.
“We visited their Surrey headquarters and took a close look at some of its 5-axis Hyper Variaxis machines and HyperMILL programming suite from Open Mind. We were so impressed – particularly with its milling capabilities – that we ordered a Variaxis soon afterwards. The machine is not only fast and accurate but from an ergonomic and operational perspective, its large open envelope means our operators can walk right into it. We also invested in three suites of HyperMILL 5-axis programming software.”
The heart of the Advanced Engineering’s business is the engineering office. “Everything is machined to computer generated models,” Mr Hall divulges. “We machine to the model, build to the model and inspect to the model and our ISO Code 3 programs link directly to the machine from the office. Effectively, we take the model and specify the whole production route – from the machine tool we’re going to use down to the tools required to machine each component.”
Going forward, Mr Hall says Advanced Engineering will add to its current 5-axis machines through the addition of more multi-axis machines and steadily replacing its 3- and 4-axis models. “We have maximised the use of the floor space currently available to us and now to increase capacity we will have to increase the efficiency of our machines. This will be done by continuing with our investment programme with Mazak as the key partner.”
