Boneham & Turner celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year and is a leading manufacturer and supplier of tooling components and precision engineered components in the UK. The Mansfield-based company prides itself on reacting to customer requirements, maintaining imperial and metric stocks of over 350,000 jig and drill bushes and over 1.3 million dowel pins.

Quality is at the forefront of everything that Boneham & Turner represents, not only the products it produces but the suppliers it chooses. One such supplier is delapena Honing based near Cheltenham.

Managing director Peter Boneham says: “Celebrating our 100 years in business was a very proud moment. I am fourth generation managing the business alongside my cousin. In the 100 years many things have changed, but one thing has remained constant and that is our focus on quality and innovation.”

Boneham & Turner works in many sectors including F1 motorsport, aerospace, general engineering, composite industries and plant. Honing has been carried out in-house for over 70 years. However, over time this became very reliant on one person within the business and when they retired much of the knowledge was lost. The company looked for a solution that would mean that less knowledge was needed to carry out honing tasks.

Boneham & Turner chose delapena Honing to partner with and ordered three delapena SpeedHone EAS machines.

delapena Honing will soon be celebrating 100 years since its formation and supports every aspect of improving surface finish, from feasibility on a part, to specification and new machine manufacture, to special tools and services.

“We chose the delapena SpeedHone EAS because of the machines capability,” explains Peter Boneham. “It’s very easy to set up, simple for new operators to be trained and is a very high precision machine that achieves the tolerances and concentricities that we require for our drill bushings. Another key for us was that the delapena SpeedHone EAS is a lot cleaner and much safer than the traditional hones you would see in our industry.”

Boneham & Turner was attracted to delapena firstly for the efficiencies that the SpeedHone offers, but another key factor was the knowledge that the delapena team provides through their vast knowledge both on the ground and at their head office in Cheltenham. It is this complete service that lead Boneham & Turner ordering three machines and consignment stock.

“delapena is a very supportive company,” continues Peter Boneham. “We have a commitment from delapena in terms of the tooling and helping us continually improve our methods. We also have a consignment stock of tooling that really helps us to manufacture profitably and efficiently.”

The SpeedHone is a compact machine with considerable flexibility and capability. The honing process becomes deskilled and offers both a semi-automatic and manual operation. The SpeedHone is ideal for one off and batch production work, honing diameters from 1.14 mm to 80 mm with an increment of one micron.

delapena Group has every facility required for honing, including an application centre, subcontract honing department, tooling refurbishment centre and a reverse engineering tooling centre. The company has built a reputation over the past 90 years for high quality products, great service and value.