Success story of Toyo Matic Aerospace Ltd.

13.05.2020

The company Toyo Matic Aerospace Ltd. invited us to visit their factory in Brasil. We talked to owner and CEO Mr. Edvaldo da Rosa and learned about the main reasons for the purchase of the M120 MILLTURN / 3000mm. The market is asking for flexible, fast and precise solutions, which are excellently covered by WFL’s multitasking machining concept.

Mr. Edvaldo da Rosa, please give us a short overview about your company’s history.

The company Toyo Matic was founded in 1987 and focused on the renovation of machinery and equipment at this time. Due to the lack of spare parts in the market, the company improved its techniques and skills in machining in order to meet its own needs. Some years later, around 1998, the telecommunications market was growing rapidly and an opportunity for change arose. Toyo Matic gained its first experience in the production of high precision and serial parts. In the same period, the doors of the automotive market opened. In 2001, a wish came true when we entered the aerospace market. Throughout these years and through our experience, opportunities have emerged in other segments, such as energy generation and medical areas, as well, thus diversifying our range of activities.

Mr. Da Rosa, what is your company’s core competence, what kind of parts are you producing and what machinery and equipment do you have on site?

First of all, I can give you a short overview of the area we are located in: we have 118,000 m² of which 10,000 m² is built-up area, divided into a factory floor (6000 m²), an administrative area (2000 m²) and a leisure / dining area (2000 m²). Toyo Matic‘s 3, 4 and 5-axis machining centres, lathes and multi-tasking machines constitute our vast fleet of machines and prove that investing in new features and technologies is a constant concern of Toyo Matic.

Our competence is to always act fast and according to our customers’ needs. We want to exceed their expectations in meeting the deadlines and ensuring the quality of our products. Another competence I would like to underline, are our 70 employees. Our personnel management policy is focusing on the training of our employees, taking their potential and individual capacities as a driving force for our company. We use the software Autocad, Solid Edge, NX (Unigraphics) and UNICAM for developing programs and projects. We also have Vericut software for programming, simulating and optimising processes.

Why did Toyo choose the WFL multitasking machine and why especially the M120 MILLTURN?

I have seen the machine on my customers’ site for the first time and was very impressed. Not only because of its variety, but also because of requests from my customers, I decided to buy one. Furthermore, the machine is perfect for manufacturing complex parts for the aerospace Industry and the technical data perfectly fits the production of our customers’ work pieces. The M120 MILLTURN allows for one-hit machining of complex work pieces with a length up to 12000mm and swing diameters up to 1140mm. We also bought an M80 MILLTURN for the manufacturing of longer parts and for making deep holes, especially for work pieces used in the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, the oil and gas industry is not yet in a very good situation. However, we are still hoping to receive an order from a customer in the near future. Perhaps we will use the M80 to manufacture parts for the aerospace industry as well. As flexibility is one of the machine’s key characteristics, we can use if for machining a huge range of different work pieces.

What kind of work pieces are you producing on the M120 MILLTURN / 3000mm at the moment?

We bought the machine because of an order from an European customer from the aerospace industry. They are producing helicopter parts and more precisely rotor shafts. Nevertheless, not only the aerospace industry, but also the automotive industry as well as the oil and gas industry are important for us. The main reason for buying a MILLTURN multitasking centre was the high quality of the machined work pieces.

Regarding service and support: have you always been satisfied with WFL’s services?

We never had any problems so far. For this reason, I can’t say anything about the promptness of WFL services. It has been working in a plug and play mode so far, as no incidents have occurred. Only when we first installed the machine, we had some alerts for approximately 1-2 weeks. However, the WFL service acted very fast and we have been satisfied. That you have a service team here in Brazil is great of course.

What do you think about the advantages related to the multitasking functions of the MILLTURNS? Would you please name some key facts about the multitasking idea and what is important for you?

The main reason why we bought this kind of machine was the better ability to prevent mistakes. You can save time and even prevent errors, as you do not need to move the part from one machine to another. When you have the suitable program for your part, the machine is almost able to work alone. „Complete machining “is the key word: putting the part into the machine once and manufacturing it completely. The defined process and program needs to be perfect in advance, then machining in one clamping becomes reality.

How many operators are working on the M120 MILLTURN at the moment?

We have 10 multitasking machines with two operators. We have many machines but not all of them are working at the same time. For this reason, the operators can care about their projects in a good way. Although we have many different machines with different control panels, our team is able to manage all the orders in a good way as they are well trained on diverse controls. If you dispose of good programs and processes from the beginning on, everything is done and the machine runs. Therefore we are satisfied with MILLTURN multitasking.

What are the strategic plans for Toyo Matic? What do you believe in?

At the moment we have many jobs from the automotive industry and we are producing fixture systems for engine blocks. However, as the automotive industry is not that stable, I am hoping for the incline of the oil price. We are ready to provide parts for the oil industry, but need to wait until the price is going up. Customers know what we are producing and doing and they reach out to us, when they need special parts. They know that we are able to deliver, that we are flexible and that we can provide the very work pieces and machining processes they need. If a customer has a difficult part, they know that we are the perfect partner and supplier. Brazil is still in a crisis, but from my point of view, things are getting better.

What do you think about Industry 4.0? How common is that in Brazil right now? In the machine tool industry everybody is talking about Internet of things and connectivity. Please tell me your opinion about industry 4.0, predictive maintenance, communication between machines and so on.

I think the most important thing is that you have good machines, good processes and of course good people to get all the stuff done. Good machines and equipment in general are really important, but what they are doing between each other or what data they generate, that‘s still a future topic for us. Perhaps we have 100 of robots in 10 years that are working (is laughing) – I don’t know. Nevertheless, automation is one of the topics I believe in. A topic where we still have potential and where processes are optimized. Last but not least, I can state that I don’t know the formula of success, but „customer is king“ is the most important thing for us. And for that we act.