Not many businesses can trace a history back over 240 years, but Thomas Keating, which began life in the shadow of St Paul’s cathedral in London, making Flea Powders and, in spite of its strapline ‘Keatings Kills’, it became very successful, moving into a variety of other health giving products, such as throat lozenges. The business eventually passed into the hands of the Wylde family, where it has been for the past four generations. As living conditions improved the company turned its attention from flea bites to engineering, creating what is now a leading, ISO 9007-2015 accredited, provider of precision engineering and toolmaking services, with capabilities covering jig boring and grinding, EDM, Electro-forming, and CNC and manual machining; it is also the recipient of The Queen’s Award for Enterprise for International Trade.

Precision engineering at Thomas Keating has been growing and becoming the main focus of the business since the 1940s, when it helped the war effort by producing tailplanes for Hurricane aircraft. Now, over 70 years later the company is truly reaching for the stars having been successful in winning contracts worth £8.5 million from the European Space Agency and Airbus to design, manufacture and test a range of sub-systems for the microwave instruments in the ESA MetOp-SG weather satellite programme.

This contract has placed additional load on an already busy machine shop so Thomas Keating’s Technical Manager, Simon Duke started to review existing capacity. The XYZ SMX 4000 is now playing an important role being used for roughing operations and pre-op work as well as on development projects.

Thomas Keating chose the SMX 4000 due to its spindle power and table size. The 5.75 Kw (7.5HP) allows it to carry out roughing operations on materials such a titanium and Vanadis 10 tool steel, while the 1470 x 356mm table has created the opportunity to have multiple set-ups in place at the same time. The ProtoTRAK control and its ease of use was also a major influence in the purchase of the machine. “With only one day’s training we were confident in the operation of the machine and we have now entrusted its operation to Thierry Chapman, who has just completed his apprenticeship.

Thierry was one of three people from Thomas Keating to attend the one-day training course where the basic machine operation and use of the ProtoTRAK was explained.

The overall capability of the XYZ SMX 4000 has been a revelation to Thomas Keating and its versatility is allowing much more to be done on it than originally intended. It is being used as a test bed for machining strategies and developing fixturing. “These are things that we simply did not have capacity to do on our machining centres.

Of course, there is more to buying a machine than checking if its specification meets your requirements and here XYZ Machine Tools also gets a glowing report from Thomas Keating’s Works Director, Michael Clack: “Working with XYZ Machine Tools was much easier than the experiences we have had with other machine tool companies. The service we received was fantastic and when you combine that with the value for money and ease of use it has proved to be one of the best machine purchases we have made.”

Tel: 01823 674200
Fax: 01823 674 201
Email: nigel.atherton@xyzmachinetools.com
www.xyzmachinetools.com