More Than a 'Micro' Success at MACH for Rainford

The announcement of new agencies coming under the umbrella of Rainford Precision prior to MACH, set the stage for the company’s most successful event to date. Acknowledged as the UK’s leading supplier of ‘micro machining’ solutions with machine tools and cutting tools for true ‘micron’ precision, the extension of the Rainford Precision brand at MACH delivered a wealth of new business and enquiries from end users unable to locate a micro machining solution anywhere else in the marketplace.

The new agency agreements put into place prior to MACH primarily centre around holemaking, threading and milling products and these new lines were demonstrated at the show with technical support on hand all week from the European suppliers.

Undoubtedly a crowd pleaser for Rainford was the showing of potentially the UK’s smallest diameter range of drills manufactured by Iwata Tool. The drilling line starts with diameters from 0.008 mm to 0.100 mm and flute lengths of 3xD, 6xD and an astounding 12xD. For show visitors focusing upon the ‘micro machining’ sector, they clearly found what they required on the Rainford stand with the new Iwata drilling line supported by its new range of end mills from 0.008 mm to 0.100 mm with flute lengths of 2xD, 4xD and 6xD.

Complementing the Iwata Tool range of micro drills and end mills was the new Osawa line of drills and milling tools. Osawa gives Rainford customers access to an extensive range of drills from standard HSS and carbide to through coolant drills with diameters from 1 mm to 30 mm with some ranges offering 0.05 mm or 0.1 mm diameter increments. The drilling line is supported with high quality end mills and face mills from 1 mm to 160 mm with more application specific end mills and coatings for machining graphite and additionally abrasive and hard materials, available from 0.2 mm diameter. With show visitors’ diverse demands for drilling and milling covered by Rainford, the company was also delighted to give MACH debuts to Japanese company Yamawa and Swiss company Xactform that provide threading solutions for specific application based demands.

The expertise of Yamawa with regard to tapping lines is unparalleled and is demonstrated by its 158 different solutions for producing metric threads. The solutions are offered with parameters such as tool material, workpiece material type, roll or standard tap, through or blind hole, hand or machine taps and synco or rigid tapping to name a few. In instances where tapping isn’t the threading solution of choice, manufacturers can now acquire tools from a comprehensive selection of threadmills from Swiss threading specialist Xactform.

With a technical expert on hand all week at MACH, Xactform highlighted its ‘problem solving’ solutions to a diverse range of threading applications in the micro machining sector. Most importantly, and key to Rainford teaming up with Xactfrom is the potential to develop specialised threadmills with either a special thread-form, overall length or extended clearance that is unavailable from alternate cutting tool suppliers.