Subcontract Manufacturing
Established in 1938, Wall Colmonoy is a multinational materials engineering company with operations in the U.S, Canada, U.K, and France. The company's high-quality products, marketed under the Colmonoy and Nicrobraz trade names, are well-known throughout the global metals industry for their superior wear protection and advanced joining properties. Wall Colmonoy's renowned hard surfacing and brazing alloys have multiple applications within a wide range of global sectors including the aerospace, petrochemical and processing industries.
From the company's European Headquarters located near Swansea, Wall Colmonoy Ltd (WCL) manufactures Nicrobraz, nickel-based braze filler metal powders, and are able to develop bespoke vacuum brazing techniques and customer solutions for OEM applications. With the benefit of forty years of UK based experience, the company's high-tech Swansea facility operates a number of vacuum furnaces which range in size from 0.5m to 2.1m in diameter and up to 2.8m in length. The furnaces feature the latest Eurotherm furnace control technology and are used for vacuum furnace brazing, in addition to a wide range of other advanced heat treatment applications.
Wall Colmonoy Ltd operations are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified, whilst the company's processing operation has NADCAP approval for vacuum heat treatment and vacuum brazing. Processes such as fluoride and hydrogen cleaning are also available, enhancing the company's advanced brazing/processing capabilities. A fully equipped machine shop, using a range of advanced CNC machine tools reflects the comprehensive nature of the services on offer.
As a provider of advanced wear protecting and joining solutions to extremely challenging applications, within some of the most demanding industries in the world, WCL operate a rigorous quality control regime throughout all aspect of the company's endeavours. Remaining at the forefront of material and dimensional testing techniques, WCL make regular purchases of the latest inspection and testing equipment.
Typical of the company's frequent investments in quality is the latest Coordinate Measuring Machine purchased from the largest UK based CMM manufacturer, Aberlink. David Wilmer WCL's Inspection Supervisor takes up the story. "After seriously considering the alternatives, we purchased our first Axiom CMM from Aberlink more than 15 years ago. The accuracy and ease of use our first Aberlink machine, together with its ability to operate within our harsh environment, meant that, soon after the launch of the successor to our first CMM, we obtained the enhanced Axiom too machine. Now based within our machine shop the Axiom too's user friendly characteristics allow our machine operators to make regular in process checks and to measure first-off components."
"Our recent purchase, the much larger Aberlink Zenith CNC Coordinate Measuring Machine, is situated in our environmentally controlled inspection department where it is used to accurately measure both single large components, and because of its generous bed size and fully automated CNC capability, multiple jig-mounted smaller parts.
Having explored the alternatives, we felt at the time of our first CMM purchase, that Aberlink had a definite edge over the opposition. Although we are aware of the developments made by other CMM manufacturers in the intervening years, we remain convinced that the technical progress made by Aberlink over the last 15 years, makes Aberlink CMMs by far the most suitable for our particular purposes."