Impressive Growth Through Challenging Times for Gloucestershire CNC Precision Engineering Company

At Stratos Precision Engineering, we specialise in manufacturing components from Engineering Plastics and Aluminium for a wide range of industries including sub-sea, energy, transport, oil and gas, food and beverage, playground and agriculture.

Joint owners Jon Caple and Mark Vine formed Stratos in 2012. In that time, we have rapidly expanded, currently employing 15 people and running 14 CNC mills, lathes, routers and a brand-new 7 Axis Citizen Sliding Head machine.

Jon explained, “Mark and I met some years ago whilst working at the company. We often talked about forming our own business and after working closely for two years we felt we had the interlocking skills to make Stratos a reality. Six months later we’d raised funds to buy our first CNC machines, one second-hand Haas VMC and one XYZ turret mill.

“Within just three months we’d attained ISO 9001:2008 accreditation. The business was picking up at a tremendous rate. After some very late nights learning the ‘dark art’ of search engine optimisation, our website was getting over 1,200 hits per month. The steady stream of work from repeat business became a torrent as more new clients joined our customer base. We knew we had to invest in both machinery and staff.”

“Our first Haas machines were a VF-0E and a VF-2,” added Mark. The VF-0E we bought second hand and have since upgraded it for a larger Haas VF4SS (super speed). Our investment in a new VF-2 was possible with help from a Regional Growth Fund grant. This grant also enabled us to take on another member of staff which allowed us to cope with the growing demand as well as increase our capacity to take on even more work.

“We decided on Haas machinery because having worked on them for fifteen years, I knew they were more than capable of providing the quality and accuracy to keep us and, more importantly, our customers happy. The VF-2 proved to be 20-25% more productive than our older machine, not only because it takes less time to generate a machine program using Visual Quick Code on the Haas control, but also due to the faster cutting feed rates and rapid speeds.”

To simplify setup, the VF-2 is fitted with the Wireless Intuitive Probing System for setting work offsets and tool offsets.

“We probe some of the critical parts 100 percent,” Mark said, “but generally, we use a probe hole to locate the vice or fixture, and a stop for the material.”

Mark Vine continued, “One of the Haas mills is currently cutting polypropylene clamping plates, which will be used to secure compressed air bottles to subsea ROV’s. This is a three-operation part with a cycle time of just under two hours, because of its many threaded cross-holes, counterbores, undercuts and slots.”

“The VF4SS is working hard producing a range of spares for the food industry. We can work from drawings or reverse engineer pretty much any part to produce small batches that will still work out way cheaper for our customers than the OEM’s own spares. Using our CAD package OneCNC XR6, we can accept customers’ drawings in various forms including DXF, DWG, PDF, IGES & STEP and transfer the program via USB to our Haas and other machines. Any adjustments can be easily made directly at the control.”

We've also added five Haas turning centres. The latest being a brand new ST-35 with a 3,200 rpm A2-8 spindle, 12” (305mm) chuck, cutting up to 4” (102mm) bar. 

“The ST-35 has doubled our capacity of larger diameter turning, which is really important to us to gain new business and routes to other markets and larger projects as well as servicing existing customer requirements.

“It has some great features and we’ve really noticed the improvements to the UI; it saves time which saves money. We’ve been able to transfer some of the work from other machines to spread the workload and release the backlog to ease the pressure. This means our machinists can be more productive with their time. We also know we can add extra features to the machine down the line to future proof as required.”          

“In the last five years we have quadrupled in size,” concludes Jon. “We’ve taken on new trained staff including skilled machinists and production manager as well as introduced finance and marketing departments. We’ve also moved premises twice; now operating from an 8,000 sq ft factory in the heart of Gloucestershire. Our investment in Haas machinery has aided our growth and enabled us to offer an improved range of services to our customers and we’re really excited about the future of Stratos Precision Engineering.”

So if you are looking for an established CNC machining company for plastic and metal components, get in touch by emailing sales@stratosengineering.co.uk or telephone 01452 840422 and let us know about your projects.