Powertrain work-holding fixtures delivered to Amtek Group

Hyfore Engineering has recently completed the delivery of the latest phase of work-holding fixtures to the Amtek Group. Throughout the past year, the Coventry-based engineering company has delivered 54 bespoke fixtures into the Amtek Group, which operates a major aluminium die casting foundry in Witham.

Amtek also operates a machine shop and casts components in the range of 400 to 2700t. The company works closely with its fellow Group member Coventry based King Automotive Systems which is predominantly dedicated to machining and for which Hyfore is also a major work-holding and fixturing supplier.

Amtek’s Witham facility produces mostly powertrain engine and transmission components offering customers a fully integrated die casting and machining facility with components delivered in assembly ready condition.

Jeff Marshall, production engineer at Hyfore, said: “We have worked with Hyfore very successfully for a number of years and they are our predominant work-holding supplier.

He added: “We involve them from the very early stages; once we have a casting specification they design and prove out the prototype before taking the project to a production fixture. We are always looking to optimise our machine shops capabilities so it is important there is a lot of trust between the two parties which is the case.”

Working with production engineers at Amtek’s site in Witham, Hyfore has custom-designed fixturing to optimise the machine centre’s in Amtek’s machine shop.

Fixtures supplied cover the spectrum from cubes and tombstones to multi-part fixtures to suit various single spindle horizontal machining centres.

Additionally, it has supplied a fourth axis bridge plate type multi-part fixtures to suit both single and twin-spindle Chiron vertical machining centres which have been supplied by Engineering Technology Group (ETG).

All fixtures supplied by Hyfore, use the hydraulic clamping method and before commissioning, all were subjected to rigorous CMM inspection in Coventry to verify conformity to design specification.