Case Study: Repair, Don’t Replace!

Matara repairs large ballscrew, saving aerospace company almost 80%

SNAPSHOT

By using Matara’s
engineering expertise, a
British aerospace company
has achieved close to 80%
savings by repairing rather
than replacing a large
ballscrew on a CNC machine.

ABOUT: A British multinational arms and aerospace company!

THE REQUIREMENT: Solution needed for damaged large ballscrew in CNC machine

Ballscrews are mechanical devices used to produce a linear motion from rotational motion. Highly efficient, they are ideally suited to both higher-load applications and those that require greater positional accuracy.

At an aerospace company in the North of England, a very large ballscrew measuring over two metres long had become damaged and was no longer performing to its best ability. When the machine was traversing, the noise it was generating suggested it had lost some balls or there was a lot of wear on the balls or the nut. The ballscrew, which had been in operation for well over a decade, is used in a Puma 400 long bed CNC machine capable of handling parts almost 7 feet long. The supplier of the CNC machine was unable to supply a repair service, so the aerospace company was looking to purchase a replacement of the ballscrew, which was both costly and had a 7-10 working day lead time.

THE SOLUTION: Repair rather than replace wins on cost, delivery & sustainability

As part of the Rubix group – Europe’s largest supplier of industrial maintenance, repair and overhaul products and services – Matara has a close working relationship with Rubix’s Insite™ teams. Insite is essentially a Rubix branch within a customer’s site, dedicated solely to that customer. It helps customers achieve cost savings by consolidating vendors and providing value-added services, including those from other companies within the group. The Rubix Insite Manager located at the aerospace company suggested to the company’s Maintenance Supervisor that rather than replace the large ballscrew, the repair was possible through Matara. Matara has a large, fully equipped machine shop facility at its headquarters in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, allowing up to 80 ballscrews to be machined per day.

Matara inspected the ballscrew and quoted for the repair work at £1,140.00, which compared to more than favourably against the £5,641.00 cost of replacement; representing a saving of almost 80%. The work on the damaged ballscrew was produced to a high quality and it was returned in full working order in just seven days.

The benefit of repair rather than replace is not only a financial win, but also one for sustainability, stopping the existing ballscrew from heading to landfill.

Take a look at our range of linear motion and pneumatic components: