SEPTEMBER BLOG – Interview with Stuart Rawlinson on £900,000 investments

Read the recent ‘Engineering Capacity’ interview with Stuart, our Sales Director, on increasing capabilities and capacity at Grenville Engineering…

Grenville Engineering has invested over £900,000 in the latest laser cutting, bending and punching technology to increase its capabilities and capacity.

One of the key investments was a 10kW Bystronic Bysprint 3015 3000 x 1500 bed fibre laser installed in September 2021. This complemented existing 6kw and 3kW Trumpf fibre laser machines.

Sales Director Stuart Rawlinson explained: “Grenville wanted to invest in the latest technology and this new machine is much quicker than the previous machine. We can produce more parts per minute, get them to our customers more quickly, and increase our capacity.

Another benefit of the new machine is that the more powerful laser can cut thicker material and can also cut thicker material using nitrogen. This eliminates the need for a second operation to remove the oxide layer prior to powder coating.

Stuart added: “It has also taken us into different market sectors by cutting thicker stainless steels.”

Grenville also invested in a new Bystronic Xpert 200t, 3m bed press brake.

Stuart explained: “All our other press brakes are Bystronic models, so we kept with the same manufacturer. All our operators are fully trained on this brand of machine so there was no learning curve or need for extra training. We have been very impressed with the machines we currently have and they do everything we need.

The new machine increases the maximum tonnage available from 150t up to 200t and also has an increased open height for producing deeper boxed parts and also has a full length of integrated fold/flatten mechanism for producing safety edges.

The final investment was in a used Trumpf TruPunch 3000 S11 CNC punch press.

Stuart said: “Our other machine was ageing and having some issues. We decided to buy another but explore the used market again for this machine.

“It was purchased from Severn Machines Ltd. They do a complete refurb of the machine prior to installing it. Again, this was something we had done previously that had worked really well.

“This machine is quicker and has a lot more features, which allows us to use much more tooling available to the machine.”

Summing up how Grenville has enhanced the capacity and capabilities that it can offer its customers Stuart concluded: “Grenville has spent over £900k to increase our capacity and make sure we stay competitive at a time when resource costs are rising. These new machines enable us to offer a much wider variation of parts to customers whilst reducing lead times and increasing our capacity.

“We have had a very strong year and continue to grow, so we need these investments to enable us to keep pace with new and existing customers.”