The company has been asked to cut a very wide variety of materials and objects in almost 40 years of subcontract sawing. Some jobs were completely unforeseen.

Slicing-up meteorites for the Natural History Museum, London, is amongst the most unusual. The accompanying media coverage has led to some still seeing Accurate Cutting Services as “the company that cut the meteorites”.

The company has cut three meteorites - the Nantan, Henbury and the Steinbach. The sectioning of these rare meteorites has given universities, world-wide, an opportunity to research the composition of planets, and even to take a closer look at the centre of the earth.

The Nantan Meteorite

On the 22nd March 1994, Accurate Cutting Services cut the 4.5 billion year-old Nantan meteorite into five pieces for the five European museums which funded its purchase.

TV cameras rolled under green lights and national press reporters arrived to witness the event. Coverage followed on national TV and in articles in most local and national newspapers (which coincided, also, with a national science week).

The Nantan meteorite, named after the place where it was found, Nandan County, Guangxi, China (Nantan is now spelled Nandan), was originally part of a shower of lumps of iron totaling 9.5 tonnes, distributed over an area of 30 square kilometers. It is one of a rare group of IICD meteorites, with a composition 84.6% iron and 6% – 7% nickel.

Only 16 are known – but unlike most iron meteorites, this type never completely melted. They were found in 1958, when China needed a lot of steel to construct “New China”. During this period, everyone was told to look for iron ore: even cooking woks were melted, in back yards, to produce steel. Some farmers were lucky to find heavy rocks rich with iron in Nantan. Unfortunately, the “iron ores” would not melt. This puzzled the local people, and they reported it to the government.

Geologists arrived to study the rocks, and declared them to be iron meteorites. Accurate Cutting Services was chosen for the task of dissecting the meteorite after scientists at the Natural History Museum searched for several months for a suitable contractor. This was the first time the company had been asked to dissect a meteorite.

“We want to know how we came to be, and a meteorite can tell us some of the answers,” said Dr Robert Hutchison, leader of the cosmic mineralogy research programme at the Natural History Museum.
“It’s like Christmas to me,” added Dr Hutchison. “I’ve never had a chance to cut up such a large meteorite. Usually we only get the chance to cut up pieces that are the size of a fist.”

The mainly iron meteorite weighed 255kg, and was of an irregular shape which necessitated setting it in surgical plaster to prevent it moving about during the cutting. A carbide-tipped bandsaw blade was used, fitted to a heavy duty vertical band-saw, and the process took less time than was anticipated. The machine’s blade deviation control indicated that there were hard spots caused by inclusions within the iron, which, on examination after the first cut, were thought to be graphite, iron sulphides and iron phosphate with nickel, formed when the meteor was originally created.

The Americans have bought a tonne, and the five European museums clubbed together to buy their quarter tonne piece from Guilin College of Geology, in Guangxi province, for $25,000.

Cutting bars into forging billets, to carefully controlled weight and length tolerances, close to where its customer needs them, Accurate Cutting Services enables Stokes Forgings Group to run its stocks very lean. The customer receives the cut pieces only on the day they are wanted.

The company cuts a wide range of carbon, alloy, bearing and micro-alloy steels using carbide circular saws, providing input to its customer’s press and hammer forges.

The annual volume of some 15,000 tonnes will be used by Stokes Forgings to produce parts, primarily for the automotive industry, such as wheel hubs, gears, crankshafts, radius arms, steering knuckles and suspension arms. They are chosen by many leading motor vehicle and other manufacturers.

The company set up a factory close to the forging plant to meet its customer’s stringent delivery requirements.

“Accurate Cutting Services has proved itself very flexible and quick to respond to sudden changes in our production programme,” comments Ian Young, managing director at West Midlands-based Stokes Forgings Ltd. “Without that level of service, forging equipment would stand idle, and supplies to end-customers would be jeopardised.” Lean stocks from the company’s on-time deliveries allow us to concentrate our investment in key pieces of forging plant,” adds Mr Young.

Stokes Forgings Group, a Mahindra & Mahindra Group company, is one of the largest forging suppliers in the UK supplying medium to large volume ferrous forgings, in the range 0.2kg to 35kg, for automotive power train, chassis, suspension, axle and door systems, including for motor-sport, commercial and off-road use, and materialshandling, construction and rail.

Accurate Cutting Services, established in 1969, provides the UK’s largest and most versatile subcontract sawing service, offering efficiency gains prior to machining, and after casting, forging, fabrication or extrusion. The company aims to provide the capacity to meet varying or increasing demand, all within its customers’ cost expectations.

Its Midlands-based main factory investigates component failures, offering value-recovery opportunities, and provides blade and sawing machine sales, repairs and servicing.

The precise band-sawing of titanium by Accurate Cutting Services enables the fan blade machining cell at Callender’s to make parts for use in Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Witney “hollow fan” aero-engines.

More than 10 years of service to Callender says that the company is getting this crucial operation exactly right.

“Accurate Cutting Services understands our needs and those of our customers”, comments Andrew Nicoll, business development manager at Callender Lancashire Aeropart Ltd. “The company has in-depth sawing ‘know-how’. Anything less would cause huge disruption to our business and, more importantly, would quickly impact on our customers” adds Mr Nicoll.

By working on-site, the company is able to create short communication lines with its customer, achieving quick turn-rounds and maximum flexibility. These economic advantages are combined with the benefits of a technical expertise acquired over four decades in sub-contract sawing.

Callender was incorporated in the RLC Engineering Group in 2002. The Group, employing some 740 people and with turnover in excess of £60 million, provides world-class first tier supply and integration services to OEMs in a number of high integrity industries.

Callender’s business ethos is to create customer satisfaction by “doing what we say we’ll do”. That way, it has gained a reputation for reliability, integrity and honesty said to be unequalled throughout the industry.