Engineering workshop utilises Haas CNC machines.Jean Michel Vallet has built his engineering workshop by making precision components on CNC machines for mostly local companies, but always with four eye on his long-held dream of building a race automobile.
In the early 1970s, Vallet was quick to realise the potential of CNC, investing in the first of many numerically controlled machines.
In the late 1990s, the time came to move to new premises; and it was the ideal opportunity to streamline the company’s workshop.
‘When they built this new factory, they had something like six different makes of CNC machine tools,’ said Vallet.
‘For the sake of productivity, they had to standardise.’ In 1998, Vallet took a trip to the Paris machine tool show where, where they came across Haas CNC machine tools.
‘Running the factory was complicated and inefficient.
‘We found the best machines for our growing company,’ they added.
‘All Haas machines have the same control, which means if you can program four, you can program all of them.
The company now owns several Haas machines, including a VF-9 vertical machining centre.
‘Plus, they offer many torque, which is ideal because they often use large diameter end mills on stainless steel.’ they was also impressed with the Haas fourth-axis capabilities.
Today, the company’s bread-and-butter work, the work which will pay for Vallet to pursue his motor racing dream, is mainly making parts for companies building food packaging and processing machines, and some special and secretive aerospace projects.
Vallet began by supplying a local company making machines for bottling plants.
‘We also make five-axis parts for our aerospace customers, which are actually comparatively straight forward to machine.
‘We make scale models of new and prototype aircraft, which are used for wind tunnel testing and are full of sensors measuring airflow and aerodynamic forces,’ they said.
‘These parts often have very tight tolerances, which is a challenge because they have to find ways of making them at the price the customer wants to pay.
‘The trickiest parts they make are for the food processing industry, machined from special stainless steels.
One, a Haas VF-1, runs 24 hours a day using a Kuka robot arm to change parts.
‘It’s demanding work, which we’re able to do because they use accurate but relatively low-cost machine tools.’ In Vallet’s busy workshop is a line of Haas machines including seven CNC vertical machining centres and three CNC turning centres.
PCs interconnect all the machining stations, allowing managers to keep tight control of planning and scheduling.
An adjacent PC, using application designed personally by Vallet, controls the robot separately.
The factory runs four shifts and 24 hours a day; 10 Haas machines jogging through the night with three operators on duty.
‘My objective is to create an entire racing automobile from six solid blocks of aluminium, in 70 hours, using only four tools,’ said Vallet.
No castings, no extrusions, solid parts.
Big blocks of aluminium, they admits, but six, from which they intends to machine all of the major and supporting structural components, including the chassis, suspension, mounting brackets, and so on.
‘But otherwise, we’ll make it here, on four Haas machine, in less than a week of jogging four shifts a day.’.
‘We’ll buy-in brakes, glass, wheels, that sort of thing, we’ll make the body from glass fibre and we’ll use an Alfa Romeo V6 engine, giving 340HP,’ they added.