Making a considerable investment in its technology and productive capacity, Johannesburg-based Efficient Engineering is to import and install one of the largest horizontal boring mills in South Africa.

According to Efficient Engineering’s Chief Operating Officer, Gary Colegate, the acquisition of this exciting CNC machine has been many months in the planning – and should be installed at the company’s 21,000 square metre facility by around mid-2023. The five-axis machine, weighing 115 tonnes, requires special foundations which have already been put in place.

“This floor-type boring machine will further add to Efficient Engineering’s production capacity with many of our existing lines of work,” says Colegate. “It will also open the door to precision large-scale machining work which  can now be executed in a single set-up  saving time and costs for local customers.”

This makes the new acquisition, which is being sourced from milling machine manufacturer TOS Varnsdorf in the Czech Republic, an important contribution to South Africa’s industrial capability, he says. It will allow mining equipment OEMS and mining companies, for instance, to procure more of their products locally – an important tenet of the Mining Charter.

He notes that milling machines of similar scale in South Africa are often dedicated to in-house work for their owners. By contrast, Efficient Engineering will now be able to offer a wider range of services to even more sectors, as its infrastructure is customer focused. The WRD150Q machine from TOS Varnsdorf also represents a step forward in technology for Efficient Engineering, allowing it to leverage recent technological advancements in this equipment.

With a fully integrated metrology system and a rotary table measuring 3 m by 3,5 m and boasting a carrying capacity of 50 t, the boring machine has a horizontal cross travel of 15 m and a vertical travel of 5 m. The total torque of the main spindle is 2,473 Nm, giving it the power to make relatively deep cuts – with rotational speeds up to 2,500 rpm. Travel speeds are high for a machine this size, with a 44 t column capable of moving at 24 m per minute in rapid travel.

“A modular headstock interface can accommodate four different universal type  machining heads, giving us the ability to achieve a wide range of different angles and shapes and access to difficult to machine areas,” he says. “The machine also has a portable wireless hand-operated control panel, allowing the operator to move around the job and control the machine while not in the operator’s cabin.”

The automated tool changer can accommodate 60 tools at a time, greatly reducing machining time and improving productivity. To fully optimise this equipment, Efficient Engineering has been training two qualified artisans in the specialised skills related to its operation. The company already has the in-house capacity to programme the machine for different set ups. The new machine will be installed with the assistance of TOS Varnsdorf engineers and the company’s local agent in South Africa, Machine Tool Promotions (MTP).