Oil and gas sector fuels major investment for Scottish engineering firm

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A Scottish engineering firm has made a major machine tool investment in order to meet the increasing demands of the country’s booming oil and gas industry.

Gall Engineering, located just outside Kintore, Aberdeenshire, has grown rapidly in recent years and its latest addition, a 5-axis multitasking machine tool – the Yamazaki Mazak INTEGREX e-500H II, is the largest piece of equipment to be purchased since opening its new machine shop five years ago.

The INTEGREX e-500H II has a large machining envelope ideally suited for the machining of long shaft work pieces up to 3000mm in length commonly associated with the components required by the oil and gas industry. With a maximum main (turning) spindle speed of 3,300rpm, the INTEGREX e-500H II is also capable of accurately handling traditionally difficult-to-machine materials required by the industry such as Inconel.

Stewart Gall, Director of Gall Engineering, commented on the investment: “The new INTEGREX e-500H II will enable us to machine many of the bigger components required by the oil and gas sector, which has been a mainstay of our business. It is capable of Done-in-One machining, in other words we can complete difficult machining operations, such as turning and milling on one machine, with one operator and one set-up. This ability to combine operations on one machine has the potential to dramatically increase our production capacity and overall efficiency.”

The roots of the Gall Engineering business lay in metal fabrication prior to the opening of the new machine shop. However, the company now has five Mazak machine tools in operation at its Kintore site: an INTEGREX i-400 5-axis multitasking machine tool; a VTC 800 vertical machining centre; a QTN 400 and QTS 250 CNC turning centre; and its most recent acquisition, the INTEGREX e-500H II.

Stewart continues: “We have doubled our production in the last two years and have plans to expand our machine shop further as demand continues to increase from the oil and gas sector. We are working to exceptionally high tolerances with many of the components required by our customers and require highly accurate machine tools in order to fulfill our orders.”

He continued: “The strength of the oil and gas sector and overall health of the Scottish economy gives us great hope for the future. We are already looking to expand our machining shop further and anticipate that our capacity will have tripled by the end of the year.”

Scott Hunter, Managing Director of ScotMaz, Yamazaki Mazak’s Scottish agent which has worked closely with Gall Engineering throughout the purchasing stage and aftersales support for all of the company’s machine tools, adds: “It’s been a real privilege to see Gall Engineering grow from a fabrication company, to being one of the most successful engineering machine shops in the area.

“We started working with Stewart, Dennis and Janice in 2009 and have helped them gradually transition the business from turning applications into multi-tasking machining. Now, with the INTEGREX e-500H II, they have the capability to machine the long-shaft workpieces often demanded by the oil and gas sector.”

Photo caption 1: (l-r) Dennis, Stewart and Janice Gall, with a Mazak INTEGREX i-400 machine tool, at the MACH 2014 exhibition in Birmingham.