Tebis helps company speed ahead of the competition!

When MHP Industries Ltd introduced Tebis to their production they witnessed a 20% time reduction in their manufacturing processes. The company produced the helmets for Team GB’s cycle team for both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics using Tebis to help speed up the process and have plans to expand their use of Tebis throughout the business to achieve similar results.

MHP was founded in 1972 and initially produced patterns for the Foundry industry. Over 30 years ago the company developed a broader customer base and moved into plastics. Now the company specialise in Vacuum Forming and Toolmaking. The company are progressive in their outlook and recently employed three apprentices with one apprentice solely working on Tebis. At their premises in High Wycombe, MHP has capabilities in Vacuum Forming, Tool design and Toolmaking, 5 and 3 Axis Routing, CNC machining, Assembly and Fabrication, Packing and Distribution. Tebis was chosen after MHP decided that the 5-Axis functionality within Tebis was greater than any other software competitors on the market.

The 2016 Olympic helmets produced by MHP for the British Racing Cycling Team.

• The Olympics, MHP and Tebis

  The Olympic project began a number of years ago when MHP were commissioned by UK Sport to produce the helmets for the British racing cycling team. Two types of helmet were developed by British Cycling and the team at MHP, one for Pursuit and one for Sprint events and the project involved former cyclist Chris Boardman. According to MHP, the helmets were a real feat of engineering, created in one piece and therefore being as aerodynamic and streamlined as possible. In fact MHP had to design the tooling to manufacture the helmets as per the designs, such was the challenge they faced. The hard work was rewarded though with 8 gold medals, 2 silver medals, and 2 bronze medals won by riders wearing MHP helmets in 2012 and the helmets were also used for the Paralympics resulting in a further 22 medals. In preparation for the 2016 Olympics, the helmets were all cut using Tebis software allowing for a quicker workflow and turnaround of the helmets as well as producing a premium trimming finish. Regarding the project Mark Hipgrave, Director at MHP said “We were proud to have been chosen for a second time to be involved in the production of the helmets for the British racing cycling team. The finish was even better with the use of Tebis and its high speed trimming capabilities. It appears some of the increased speed rubbed off on our Olympic team in Rio!”

• Speeding ahead

  Now MHP are reaping the benefits of introducing Tebis to their Trimming processes, the company are looking to expand the use of Tebis into their machining operations on the tooling side. Mark said “We currently have 5 CNC machines with capacity of up to 3m x 1m x 1m and what we’re hoping is to utilise Tebis on the machining side like we do the 5-Axis side and cut machining times down.”

  It is really easy and simple to use, a really user friendly interface.

  The future relationship between Tebis and MHP looks good with the management and users of Tebis at the company all impressed with its capabilities. Mark added that “the benefit of using Tebis in 5-Axis is that you have more control which is exactly what we need and enables us to optimise cutting paths.”

• Time to invest

  The company is looking to the future with an investment programme and recently purchased a new Haas VF9 CNC Machine. With the continued quest for increased productivity it was also time for MHP to invest in a CAD/CAM software solution that was second to none. “The software package we were using worked ok but as the company grew, customer demands became greater, we needed to find something more sophisticated.” said Mark Hipgrave, Director at MHP.

  We  decided we wanted to invest in the best type of 5-axis software we could find and that’s why we chose Tebis.

  Mark continues to explain that with using Tebis software they are pretty much going through all their previous programmes and re-programming them which has enabled the business to save time on the trimming. The work they have to do after the trimming process such as finishing has also seen times drastically reduced. Members of MHP staff have attended training courses at the Coventry office and regularly hold online viewer sessions with our application engineers to ensure they are up to speed with all the latest developments of the Tebis software. They are now working with Tebis on a daily basis and are enthusiastic about the benefits that using Tebis has bought to working life.

   

  

  MHP also produce other items using Vacuum Forming programmed by Tebis including hubs for wind turbines and parts for full size motorcycle kits.