MTD recently attended the HORN ‘Technology Days’ event in Tubingen, Germany. In November, the company will be celebrating 50 years since it was first founded. MTDCNC were at the event to celebrate the landmark anniversary and understand what has made HORN such a success down the decades and how it is mapping out its future.
During the event, Joe spoke with Mike Green from HORN UK in one of the latest facilities the company has built. Mike tells MTDCNC: “This is one of the latest expansions and this floor is dedicated to machining steel toolholders. We don’t make large quantities of toolholders like our competitors; we make batches in the region of 50 on our flexible machining centres.”
“There are no fixed programmes for these DMG MORI machines, they will sometimes manufactures standard tools and other days it will be specials. We have cartridge type toolholders and face grooving toolholders made on this particular machine and this demonstrates our flexibility.”
The facility also has a VW Beetle on site that is dedicated to the apprentices, as Mike continues: “The apprentices have the car and take the engine out, put it back in, lower the suspension and do whatever else they can with it whilst keeping it road worthy. It’s been a fantastic exercise and the apprentices have loved it, it gives them a little something different from working on machine tools.”
