Fagor Compact Plus F1

[Grimarlon Varner]

Forinstance, he purchased a Dugard Eagle BNC 1860 CMC Multifunction flat bedlathe and an ex-demonstration Dugard Eagle 1000 VMC from C Dugard of Hove, a 3Dportable measuring arm from Faro and new CADCAM software from MasterCAM andDelcam because he knew time was not on his side. His concern was to retaincustomers that had drifted away prior to, and during, clinching the sale.

High on his priority list in January was to convince his 12 key staff thattheir support would mean a company with a future as he needed their skills tomove the business into the next league. Here, the investment and the commitmentto train them to further improve their knowledge was well received along withthe withdrawal of redundancy notices.

Quick Tools was originally set up in 1962 by Paddy Langdon and taken over byhis son Trevor and wife Jill, who decided last year they wanted to retire andsell the business. A management buyout then failed and the Langdons made thedecision to close and conformed to the Law by issuing the appropriate redundancynotices. The company had been living off an impressive direct and indirectcustomer base of leading names in commercial and military aerospace and defence,F1 and industrial and commercial engineering companies with the supply ofcomplete design and manufacture of jigs and fixtures, test rigs, mould and presstools as well as developing and building special purpose machinery.

It had also carried out fabrication, some sheetmetal work and producedcomposite tooling, some small batch turning and milling plus CAD design servicesinvolving prestigious projects such as Euro Fighter Typhoon, Boeing 787, AirbusA340 and EH101 Merlin.

Axis travels are 1,020 530 510 mm and the 24 tool magazine withtwin-arm changer provides sufficient tool capacity. Quite important for QuickTools is the compact design of the machine that requires a floor space of just2.8 2,08 m making it ideal for the size of the current workshop. But oneof the reasons for seeking new, larger premises is to create enough room toenable expansion.

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