Installed over Christmas 2003 to machine bespoke components aspart of a fast reaction, in-house supply philosophy to meetrequirements of the race team at Honda Racing, two FanucRobodrill Alpha T21iD vertical machining centres are themselvesrun flat-out every day. According to Simon Buckmaster, workshopco-ordinator: 'Not only did they meet our technicalrequirements but with the backing of supplier 600 Centre, theyare really repaying the investment with dividend.' Indeed,as a result of the support given in the early days ofinstallation by the 600 Centre of Shepshed, near Loughborough tohelp Honda Racing to maximise its component manufacture responsetime and the provision of such high levels of machiningflexibility given by the two machines, Honda Racing invited the600 Group PLC company to form a three-year technical partnershipagreement. While the deal involves the machine tool supplier inthe race team's activities, it is providing front lineapplication engineering support whenever they need help andadvice.

As Honda Racing demonstrates, racing motorcycles is ahigh pressure, high profile sport that demands the best, not justfrom its support team at the track, but also its suppliers.Component response time and machining flexibility is of paramountimportance in a hectic racing calendar, as the team drivesforward in its quest for yet further British Superbike,Supersport, 125GP and Motocross championship glory.

Honda Racinghas been based at its current, pristine facility in Louth since1998, from where it manages Honda's UK motorcycle racingactivities and logistics.

The impressive, high technologyworkshop is the location for bike development and maintenance,and even includes a dyno room with high speed fans capable ofblowing in excess of 100 mph to simulate track conditions.

It wasbecoming evermore apparent last year that most of its in-housecomponent manufacture now centred on milling operations and itneeded to expand both its capability and capacity.

Says SimonBuckmaster: 'We went to the market looking for two highquality machining centres that would give a good return incapability for the investment.

After looking at a few vendors wevisited 600 Centre and saw the Fanuc Robodrills in action andknew immediately we had our machines.' Buckmaster follows onto explain: 'Not only did the Fanuc Robodrills meet all ofour technical requirements, the package price for two machineswas very competitive but more important to us was the supportelement and this is proving worth while because the decision tobuy is now paying dividends.' Installed at Louth overChristmas, the two Fanuc Robodrill Alpha T21iD vertical machiningcentres were immediately employed to produce parts such assuspension linkages, bridge mounts and link arms, as well asspecial wheel spacers for the new CBR1000RR Fireblade.

AsBuckmaster maintains: 'We are also producing an improvedgear change lever on the Robodrills for our motocross team butwhat we have found is that we really do have the ability to reactvery quickly to team requirements.

Since installing the machineswe also have the capacity to manufacture commercial parts such asfootrest assemblies.' As components such as the suspensionand gear change parts require the machining of very complex 3Dprofiles, one of the Robodrills was specified with a Nikkenrotary table to provide a fourth-axis capability.

This can alsobe mounted at 90 deg to the table if required to give evengreater freedom to machine the component design.

The othermachine is permanently set with a pair of twin vices, tomanufacture backplates for instance, as well as a standardmachine vice.

Both machines have the flexibility of a 21-toolautomatic toolchanger and 10,000 rev/min spindles with a workingvolume of 500mm in X, 400mm in Y and 330mm in Z.

Table size is650mm by 400mm.

Such is the complexity of many of the parts thattwo or sometimes three set-ups are required using specialfixtures and these are also developed and produced in-house usingthe Robodrills.

Honda Racing has found that fast setting andchangeover are helped on the T21iDs by the machine tool'slatest features included in the control such as set-up file -able to hold 30 sets of program data with automaticinitialisation.

Through 2004, Honda Racing enjoyed yet anothersuccessful season on the track in the British SuperbikeChampionship, with riders Michael Rutter and Ryuichi Kiyonari.

Inthe British Supersport Championship, rider Karl Harris has provento be a winner claiming his second consecutive title aboard theHM Plant Honda Racing CBR600RR.

Karl Harris chalked up a massive222 points in the 12 round series beating his nearest rival by 39points.

One of the influential issues of race outcome is weight.Here Simon Buckmaster estimates that up to 95 per cent of thecomponents that are machined on the Robodrills are aluminium,either 6082 grade or 7075 aircraft specification aluminium.

Thisis chiefly to give strength and reduce bike weight to help shavefractions of a second from lap times.

And, despite many of thecomponents produced being part of superficial assemblies, manydimensions demand tight tolerances.

For example, the bore on thesuspension linkage which is designed to accept a bearing journal,is tied to +/-0.015mm.

Surface finish is also important as manyof the components are visible and need to reflect quality and notcreate stress points.

Software improvements to the Fanuc 16i-MBcontrol which Honda Racing are making use of, includeFanuc's optional Auto Intelligence (AI) contour control andNano contour technology, which uses a RISC processor to read upto 600 blocks in advance.

This capability enables precise contourcontrol when milling to be maintained involving axis accelerationand deceleration without feed rate variation.

This ensures acontinuous, ultra-smooth surface texture.

'We manufactureparts to very high standards so there were high expectations forthe machines when they arrived.

To date, I can't recall asingle reject that could be attributed to either machine,'Buckmaster says.

Manufacturing precision surface contours on theT21iD is helped by a jerk control option, with automatic feedrate control at corners, which reduces mechanical shock from the1.5G acceleration capability to the 54m/min rapid traverse rate.High resolution is achievable through the latest fast responseservo motor developments that introduce an ultra-precise pulsecoder offering 16 million pulses per revolution.

'This hashelped as all the components processed through the Robodrills sofar are machined out of solid in batch sizes ranging from five to50,' explains Buckmaster.

He is first to admit the companyis not in the volume market.

'As we don't make partsfor any Honda road bikes, batches are quite modest in size.However, with quality our highest priority the parts machined area promotion of Honda Racing and our customers at the top end ofthe market.' To which he concludes: 'We feel ourfacility here at Louth is second to none in UK motorcycle racing.The Fanuc Robodrills are quick and precise and they have helpedus take an important step forward.

We can now make any componentin-house.

It is impossible to put a high enough value on that fora team that is winning championships and competing at the highestlevel.'