HYDRAULIC COPYING KEEPS UP WITH THE TIMES.

One of the leading companies involved in the design and manufacture of copying systems and units is Hepworth Iron Co (Engineering) Ltd. Hepworth is involved in both the retrofit market and the design and manufacture of its own range of copy turning turret lathes. Hepworth is most optimistic about the future of hydraulic copying particularly on the Dial-Set range of machines. On these sequence controlled turret lathes, the low template production costs and the ability to overlap several machining operations (due to the separate copying slide) are still seen as big plusses compared with undertaking operations on a single-tool basis, as is unavoidable on most NC lathes. However, the company is not unaware of the advances being made in the micro-electronics field and the threat that this poses. So it has adopted the new technology in connection with the latest optional feature for the Dial-Set 5 and 5C machines - single point screwing.