Bearings Maker Bucks Investment Trends

Revolvo is bucking the trend of investment in UK bearing manufacture with the purchase of new CNC grinding, laser etching and measurement equipment to the value of GBP 1.5 million. The new machines are required to help Revolvo meet expanded demand for both its custom designed solid bearings and SRB series of split roller bearings. 'Our ability to radically reduce delivery times, especially on large diameter bearings means that we have developed a great deal of business in this area of late', said Sales and Marketing Director Adrian Menzies. 'At the same time, more and more companies across all market sectors are realising the benefits to their production of using our latest generation of split roller bearings, which cut downtime drastically'. A member of the Wyko Group of companies, Revolvo manufactures solid bearings in sizes from 25mm bore to 1400mm external diameter and SRB in sizes from 35mm bore to over 1000mm internal diameter, plus imperial equivalents. In addition, the company also manufactures inch, special custom designed, and obsolete sizes of solid ball and roller bearings, which are used to keep older machinery in operation. All Revolvo bearings are produced to DIN PO/ABEC 1 standards, with up to P5 available on request. The bulk of Revolvo's latest investment is directed at expanding and improving the company's CNC grinding capability. This is exemplified by the purchase of new GER CNC internal/external grinding machine. At the very forefront of grinding technology, the GER machine incorporates the latest developments in electrodynamic wheel balancing, in-process gauging and measurement systems, and is entirely focused on achieving vastly reduced setup and cycle times and the highest precision requirements. Further substantial investment has also been made on three highly- advanced CNC internal grinding machines. The machines feature incredible resolution and accuracy - 0.00025mm is standard. They are equipped with hydrodynamic ways, offer taper and vector grinding capability and in-process gauging, and provide incredible versatility to satisfy demands for both long production runs and small batches. Complementing Revolvo's expanded grinding capability is an additional GBP 60,000 of investment in a new laser etching machine, and a Mitutoyo surface measurement system. Costing in excess of GBP 20,000, the Mitutoyo equipment has been purchased to further improve Revolvo's process capability, and the GBP 40,000 bearing laser etching machine has been acquired to improve the speed and quality of Revolvo's product coding and branding. 'With upwards of GBP 1.5 million sterling already spent, most companies in our position would be holding back on further investment for a while', said Menzies. 'However, we don't see it that way'. 'The gaps in the bearing market, and new opportunities with our SRB brand, mean that our business has growing potential, and we mean to exploit it'. 'Future planned investment will be the purchase of another very large vertical CNC grinding machine, which will give us the capability to expand our capacity further, by enabling us to grind bearings up to 1.5 metres O/D'.