Roscomac

Wogaard Oil Saver recovers previously wasted
​neat oil & coolant

Worthing-based Roscomac was established by Fernando Martello in 1976. The subcontract engineering business was founded on strong family values. During the following years the business has done its utmost to maintain a ‘family’ environment, both within the company and embodied in its staff and its approach to customers.

With a passion for manufacturing an array of components and sub-assemblies using the very latest CNC technology, Roscomac has a broad range of machining competencies, with a focused approach to customer service and quality that allows the business to successfully maintain its commercial relationships within a variety of industry sectors, including aerospace, medical science and instrumentation, oil & gas, and general precision engineering.

Accredited to ISO 9001, component manufacture and supply is always totally aligned to customer specifications, processes and expectations, as either stand-alone parts or sub-assemblies, with design and product development critical elements of the Roscomac contribution.
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Operating from this impressive manufacturing facility, with further technical customer support in Brno in the Czech Republic, the company employs almost 100 highly skilled and knowledgeable staff running around-the-clock.

Challenge:
​A continual investment programme means machine tool technology is regularly updated and an array of Citizen Swiss-type sliding head lathes provide the majority of the turning and mill-turning capability for Roscomac.

The range of materials machined reflects the spectrum of industries the business supports. For high volume applications Brass, Steels and difficult to cut materials, swarf tends to form a ‘bird nest’ around the cutting tool requiring the machine to be stopped and the tangle of cut material to be broken up and removed. Citizen has addressed this with its new LFV (Low Frequency Vibration) technology that effectively breaks up the stringy swarf using oscillation of the axes and cutting tool.

“Our new LFV equipped lathes can produce significantly more components per shift because there is no longer a need to interrupt the production run,” explains Production Manager, Sean Keet. “Of course, that also dramatically increased the amount of low viscosity neat oil dragged out into the swarf bins.”

Solution:
He recalls: “We purchased a number of new Citizen lathes and were made aware of the capabilities of the Wogaard
Oil Saver. It was a real eye-opener seeing the unit operate taking the neat oil back to the machine’s sump.

​As anyone running sliding head lathes knows, oil dragged out by the swarf is a problem, and previously we would try to allow our swarf bins to stand to let as much of the oil drain off. But in a busy production environment working around-the-clock that time is never really available.”

Results:
The Wogaard Oil Saver is really proving its value, as Sean Keet confirms: “Smaller chips from the LFV process allow the neat oil to drain better, and we had about 7 litres a day accumulating in the bin at anything up to £5 per litre. The Oil Saver quickly pulls this back into the sump of the machine, and that alone would pretty much pay for all 13 Wogaard units we have in the factory. And, it is not like we spend a lot of time maintaining them, it’s a fit and forget, just put it in the swarf bin every day and check that that’s sucking up and your reclaiming your money.”

Another positive factor noted by Roscomac is the reduction in sump top-ups with neat oil for the lathes. Before the Wogaard units were fitted each lathe required replenishing up to three times each week, often with large volumes of neat oil.

​Sean Keet says: “Now we only have to refill the sumps once a week and as the Oil Saver reclaims the coolant back from the swarf bin in to the same sump there is no chance of cross-contamination. This amounts to a significant amount of time saved across all the sliding head lathes.”

He continues: “Another winner for us is the machine doesn’t stop; it doesn’t come up with that alarm saying it has run out of oil in the middle of the shift when there is no one else about. If you are looking to continuously run, if you want any lights out running it is not going to stop. If our staff are off getting oil to fill up the machine they are not adding any value, so we have the Wogaard Oil Saver silently helping keep us running.”
He concludes: “I don’t know how many litres we have seen reclaimed, but it makes a positive impact on the environment and that is certainly part of Roscomac’s core family values.”