While Longley Farm is predominantly known for its award-winning dairy products, the company is justifiably proud of the innovative engineering that takes place behind the scenes; a large part of which comes from having good toolroom machinery to work with.  

“We save a great deal of time and money from being able to design and manufacture our own components to continuously improve our processes,” explains Samantha Lawton, Head of Engineering at Longley Farm.

Longley Farm, a long-term user of Harrison lathes, took the decision to replace its existing model to suit its growing business.  “We wanted a larger lathe with improved accuracy and capability to be able to do a wider variety of tasks around the dairy, the Harrison V390 was selected as the right fit for our business,” confirms Samantha. 

Utilising its infinitely variable spindle speeds, the Harrison V390 centre lathe provides a versatile tooling solution, designed for fine precision finishing. Its smooth and efficient performance combined with operator comfort and confidence, means that any application can be set up quickly and effectively. 

The new lathe has already been used in a diverse range of projects around the dairy. The most recent project for the lathe has been designing and manufacturing a new tapered roller for a whey draining process. 

The Harrison V390 centre lathe has already proved its worth enabling Longley Farm to both change the lids for its pots and redesign the piston heads for their packing machines.   The company estimates that having the pots made and installed by an external company would have cost around £25,000 per machine, so being able to design and manufacture them in-house meant a considerable saving.   

In addition, Barry Haigh, a senior Longley Farm engineer who redesigned the piston heads and manufactured them using the Harrison lathe advises that the packing machine runs much more smoothly with seal changes required every six months rather than every week.   

The lathe was particularly crucial over Christmas 2014 when the main drive shaft on Longley Farm’s cream packing machine broke. There was a three-week lead time on buying a new shaft; however, using the lathe Barry was able to make a new shaft within a day. “As Christmas is our biggest season for selling cream the lathe really was a lifesaver,” confirms Samantha Lawton. 

“Longley Farm is the cream of its industry, not only in terms of product development but also in terms of innovation in manufacturing and packing,” comments Howard Bamforth, Sales Director at 600 UK.  “We’re delighted that the Harrison V390 centre lathe has helped Longley Farm continue its rise to the top.” 

For further information, contact:  

Howard Bamforth, 600 UK Sales Director
Philip Cullen, Group Marketing Manager  

Tel: +44 (0) 1924 415000