Gundrilling and Precision Machining

Company Name: Mollart Engineering Ltd

Location: Chessington, Surrey

Eclipse Product Installed: Micromag MM20

Industry: Precision machining

Process Type: Gundrilling and general machining

Our Client

Mollart Engineering is a precision mechanical engineering business specialising in the design and manufacture of deep hole drilling machine tools, tooling, gundrills, deep hole boring and bore finishing. With headquarters, design and manufacturing operations in Chessington, Surrey, and a modern production facility in Resolven, South Wales, Mollart also has a high level of expertise as subcontract machinist and fabricator based on adding value to deep hole processing and general machining.As part of Mollart’s sub-contract machining of customer parts, the company has a PRB40 machine; an in-house gun drilling and general machining centre for work including drilling and milling. The PRB40 is capable of machining 40mm diameters in exotic materials down to 5mm, has a 120 litre pump and auxiliary pumps of 200+ litres. As the high pressure pump can cost up to £5000, prolonging its life and protecting it from damage is essential.

The Challenge

Even with a paper filter in place to go down to 20 microns, the amount of fine particulate produced by the machine would quickly settle on the bottom of the tank and impair the functioning of the pump once it had accumulated. Mollart were using strainer filters as a method of protection for the pump, but when they became thick with debris they quickly clogged. The build-up of debris required the pump to be washed manually, therefore causing down time. Not only was this method of protection ineffective, it was also time consuming.

The scavenge pump was in operation all the time, but Mollart needed to add in an effective means of removing the dust out of the oil before it had a chance to settle on the bottom of the clean tank.

The Solution

Mollart now employ a system that consists of 3 levels of filtration; a conveyor to take out the largest particles, a paper filter to go down to 20 microns , and a Micromag from Eclipse Magnetics to catch and collect the submicron particles. After the scavenge pump has been utilised, the oil passes through the Micromag, before reaching the heat exchanger in order to remove the particulate from the fluid and make the heat exchanger as efficient as possible in controlling the temperature of the fluid.

In this particular application, a single Micromag is fitted onto the machine to act as a polishing filter, which is in operation on a continuous basis. The Micromag basically acts as a clean-up filter that is employed after the base filtration methods have done their work, polishing the oil to a finer standard and removing submicron particles to achieve the highest levels of filtration.

The Micromag magnetic filter works by allowing contaminated fluid to enter the inlet port where it is dispersed by the unique tapered radial flow channels. As the fluid passes down the outside of the centrally mounted rare earth, high intensity magnetic core, it captures contamination particles along its length. The geometry of the magnetic flux circuit means that the contamination builds up in a controlled way. This ensures that the filter will not block, regardless of how much contamination it holds, as the channels remain open allowing the fluid to continue to flow freely through the unit.

Mollart clean the magnetic filter approximately every 4 to 6 weeks using the supplied cleaning tool, which is a quick and simple process. The magnetic particles can be removed from the filter and easily disposed of, with no dirty cartridges and no consumables. The device is not only compact; it has a clear bowl which allows machine operatives to see the level of contamination building up around the magnet and maintain an effective cleaning schedule to keep the process running at maximum efficiency.

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