LK celebrates one year of independence

Control 2019 in Stuttgart proved to be the venue for British CMM manufacturer LK Metrology to celebrate its first year of trading as a stand-alone company once more.

LK was purchased at the end of March 2018 from Nikon Metrology by Angelo Muscarella, owner of Italian firm ASF Metrology. The last time LK was independently owned was prior to its takeover by former holding group Metris at the beginning of 2006. In 2018, the company celebrated its 55th anniversary in the metrology industry.
“We are delighted to complete our first year so successfully, during which we made a profit despite the expense necessarily incurred in transferring ownership of the company, which included opening a new office in Shanghai,” says Muscarella. “We’ve already launched a packaged version of our Altera CMM with Renishaw Revo-2 probe, which is called the SCANtek 5. In addition, at the Control exhibition we previewed another newly developed product, the AlteraC 10.7.5, which is the first of three sizes planned.”
For further information www.lkmetrology.com

Firms unaware of AIA increase

The MTA and Close Brothers Asset Finance have published a new survey which reveals that many manufacturing and engineering firms are not planning to take advantage of the increase in the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA).

In fact, only 42% of manufacturing and engineering companies were aware that the Government had made an increase to the AIA. From 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2020 a temporary increase in the AIA has been introduced. The idea is to enable faster tax relief for plant and machinery investments between £200,000 and £1m.
For further information www.mta.org.uk

Scanners win Red Dots

Creaform’s recently launched HandyScan Black and Go!Scan Spark have won Red Dot Awards for product design.

Marco St-Pierre, Creaform’s vice president – innovation and technologies, says: “These are Creaform’s fourth and fifth Red Dot Awards in the past few years, which attests to how much we believe in the crucial role that design and ergonomics play in the overall user experience.” Each year, over 5000 entries to the Red Dot Awards are received from more than 50 countries. Entrants are judged on several criteria, including degree of innovation, functionality, formal quality and ergonomics.
For further information www.creaform3d.com

APT invests

AS9100 and ISO9001 accredited APT Leicester, a subcontract machining specialist, has invested in a Keyence dimension measurement system.

The Keyence IM-7030T has increased productivity by speeding up the inspection of components, says the company. APT’s new machine has the ability to measure multiple parts in seconds, enabling the company to spend more time on the production process itself. This strategy ensures that APT customers are consistently and rapidly provided with quality products.
For further information www.aptleicester.co.uk

Medical device subcontractor expands

A total of 24 Cincom sliding-headstock CNC bar autos were installed between last summer and the beginning of 2019 by Citizen Machinery UK at one of the two factory units operated by Shannon-based medical component manufacturer, Smithstown Light Engineering.

The major investment followed Smithstown’s receipt of a contract from a multinational medical firm for machining multiple variants of two types of endoscopic device parts from 303 stainless steel bar. Annual quantity is currently 18 million for the production of nine million assemblies.
Managing director Gerard King had identified the business opportunity in 2017 and machined sample parts on a 20 mm bar capacity Cincom L20 installed three years previously to fulfil another contract, which is still running, for turning a 316 stainless steel spindle used in a medical delivery device.
Discussions progressed and, to develop the process further, he decided to buy on-spec a 12 mm bar capacity Cincom L12, which is of more appropriate size for producing the endoscope parts in short cycle times.
Says King: “The first of the L12s started arriving in July 2018, and the last ones were on site by January this year. All are operating 24/7. The lead-time from the customer signing the contract and our shipping the first parts in production quantities was five months. Citizen supported us well during this ramp-up phase.”
All of the latest sliding-head lathes are equipped with Citizen’s patented LFV (low frequency vibration) software, part of the control’s operating system that assists chip breaking when machining materials that tend to generate long, stringy swarf during turning.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk