The competitive edge provided by in-cycle hobbing on its Citizen sliding head lathe has helped Gibbs Gears secure a contract that kept its customer’s gear production in the UK.

Gibbs Gears Precision Engineers produces over 600,000 gears a year at its Stoke Mandeville subcontract and development machine shop. Of these, some 200,000 are produced on a top-of-the-range Citizen M32-V CNC sliding head turn-mill centre in single-cycle operations involving, turning and gear hobbing with – certain gears also requiring the additional milling of drive hexagons.

On the back of the Citizen installation, Gibbs Gears was able to secure a very competitively priced contract that resulted in the retention of gear production in the UK and reversed plans by the long-served customer to source these volume parts offshore and, as a result, close its UK gear machining facility.

Said managing director Reece Garrod: “We took a flyer on buying the machine and came up trumps. When we originally found out the customer was possibly closing its UK operation for gear machining we made an approach and, with the help of Citizen Machinery UK, quoted against its targeted overseas suppliers for the range of 30 fine pitch spur gears between 5 mm dia - 0.3 Module and 18 mm – 0.8 Module.”

As Gibbs Gears was working on the premise of using the latest single-cycle machining technology, with the ability to run unmanned at night, it found it was very competitive in meeting the proposed offshore pricing strategy of the customer.

Said Mr Garrod: “We could easily ensure the level of quality and we gave the customer confidence that we could meet the tough demands on delivery to line.

“Although the machine was over capacity with its 32 mm bar size for our immediate needs, when the largest gear we were quoting for was being produced from 18 mm material, the machine guaranteed the additional rigidity for heavier and greater consistency for hobbing teeth without vibration. It also gave us the added flexibility to produce further subcontract components when needed.”

“Had it not been for winning this contract, over the coming few months our business could have been slashed by half due to market conditions. However, our fortunes changed, two competitors went out of business which helped to raise the order book and, by the New Year, we benefited from a considerable increase in new business. Such was the effect that we had to increase our workforce by taking on a few employees from the gear customer that ceased production that raised our head count to 40.”

This year has also seen tremendous growth in new business from Europe and Scandinavia, which means exports now account for 40 percent of production.

He said: “The level of the pound has really worked in our favour coupled with our growing capability, and we are now finding UK customers that were previously shipping orders overseas are reacting in our favour because outsourcing abroad is not so economic, and involves considerable levels of added expense, control and risk. This has led to a re-investigation of UK sourcing with the ability to deliver more frequent smaller batch sizes with shorter lead times to help them meet changing demands in production.”


http://www.engineeringcapacity.com/archive101/2009/december/industry_news/in-cycle_hobbing_helps_gibbs_keep_gear_business_in_uk