The company was founded in 1935 by G.C.Macfarlane and has supported a variety of industries in the supply of precision turned parts in volume. The capability has now ceased. The company has designed feed fingers for automatic lathes and two families of bar-end coning and chamfering equipment. The feed finger business was sold on 2nd October, 2000 to a partnership between Floyd Automatic Tooling and Engineering Carbide Systems.
The company designed two ranges of feed fingers which are interchangable with the traditional type of feed fingers used for single and multi-spindled automatic lathes. These have been available for twenty-five years.
The FIAN type, commonly used, features a longer lead-in chamfer and a much longer gripping area. These give the product longer life and a reduction in bar scratching. The FIRON range is physically identical but is made from cast iron. This promotes virtually scratch-free bar feeding and can be used for feeding ground bar.
The Autopointer was designed to be a portable tool for coning the ends of barstock prior to loading into automatic lathes and bar feeding CNC lathes. It has been used for many other diverse purposes and can be bench mounted. A variety of different motors can be attached to suit the application requirements and there are two families of tool: the Series 1 machines cater for low to medium usage and/or small bar size, and the Series 2 will run continually, tackling bars up to 4" in diameter and the toughest material. Variable speed selection on the Series 2 machines promotes a better matching of cutting speed for differing materials.
BS EN ISO 9002: 1994 Cert. No. Q10437
Woodhead manufacturing Company Limited, Cert No. 060