Most successful Citizen open house

In celebration of its 50 th anniversary, sliding- and fixed-head CNC lathe supplier and
automation specialist Citizen Machinery UK offered visitors to its latest open house a 100%
finance deal for machines ordered during the event. The company subsequently extended
the no-deposit arrangement to the end of that month, resulting in a record order intake of
26 turning centres valued at £4m.
Over three days, 190 customers representing 86 manufacturing companies were welcomed
through the door at Citizen’s Brierley Hill turning centre of excellence, a 40% increase on the
number that attended last year. Highlights of the show included cutting demonstrations on
all nine machines in the showroom.
More information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk

Waters opens Long bridge machine shop

Waters Corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has officially opened a
new 4181 m² manufacturing facility on the Longbridge Business Park in the West Midlands.
The new facility more than triples existing operations and enhances the company’s
machining capacity to produce components for products developed at Waters Mass
Spectrometry Centre of Excellence in Wilmslow, UK, and Wexford, Ireland.
David Clay, British Consul General to New England, says: “The fact that a leading company
like Waters has chosen the UK for this investment is a great endorsement of the regional
talent available in this sector. We look forward to seeing the new facility have a long-term
positive effect in the West Midlands.”
More information www.waters.com

Award presentation marks record year

New micro-precision tooling capability has put a Birmingham manufacturing specialist on
course for its best performance in 164 years. Brandauer, which exports 75% of the
components and tools it makes to 26 different countries, made the announcement during
the recent presentation of its King’s Award for Innovation by Derrick Anderson CBE, the Lord
Lieutenant for the West Midlands. This year has been a whirlwind period for Brandauer,
with more than £4m invested in high-speed Bruderer UK and Yamada presses, a 1-µm
capable wire EDM, a laser micro-cutter, and a rapid prototyping area.
More information www.brandauer.co.uk

Vision Precision invests in driven-tool lathe

Nottinghamshire-based Vision Precision Engineering has complemented its two XYZ
machining centres, which include an XYZ 710 featuring a 4 th axis, with a new XYZ TC 320 LTY
driven-tool lathe. The machine will better help the company keep pace with rising demand
for its services. Prominent among existing orders is the machining of parts for coffee
machines in Costa Coffee stores.
“The ability to produce milled and drilled features on our turned parts was taking up
capacity on our XYZ 710, so it made sense to purchase a machine that could produce our
parts in one hit – hence the arrival of the TC 320 LTY,” explains managing director Ian
Gibson.

With the machine’s hardened box ways, Y and C axes, and driven-tool capability, Vision
Precision set about getting the most from its latest purchase. Indeed, the company is now
quoting for work previously beyond its reach, partly due to the maximum turned diameter
of 320 mm and maximum turning length of 550 mm. In addition, with a bar capacity of 78
mm, Vision can produce more parts from bar rather than billets. Thanks to its investment in
a bar-feed, lights-out machining has become a regular occurrence.
“The machine just seems to tackle everything we throw at it, and the material removal rates
are phenomenal,” states Gibson. “From 20 mm depths of cut when turning, to drilling a 70
mm diameter hole with a modular drill in super duplex material, I think we can justify our
nickname for the machine as ‘The Beast’. It’s a well-built lathe with great power and it holds
the tolerances we demand of it all day, every day.”
More information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Metal 3D printer with 12x larger volume

AddUp’s MASSIF (Metal Additive System, Sustainable, Industrial, Eco-Friendly) project supports a broader strategy to drive the next wave of industrial and technological innovation around large-format powder-bed fusion (PBF) metal additive manufacturing (up to 1.5 x 1.5 x 2 m). The project is designed to boost productivity, reduce costs and meet evolving sustainability goals. The first PBF machine developed around these concepts features a print volume of 750 x 750 x 1000 mm high.

The new machine will leverage the robust foundation of AddUp’s FormUp 350, a platform currently in use at customers across the aerospace, medical and other high-precision industries. According to AddUp, its MASSIF machine is set to increase productivity by 300%, drastically reducing part costs by 50-70%. Furthermore, with the capability to manufacture parts 12 times larger than current AddUp machines, the machine pushes the boundaries of scale for metal additive manufacturing.

Further benefits include powder waste below 10% and best-in-class surface finishes that minimise or eliminate the need for costly and time-consuming post-processing. Additionally, its in-process monitoring instils confidence that parts are printed correctly from the start, reducing the need for expensive QA testing.

The machine series will be developed in collaboration with companies that include Cailabs, CETIM, Dassault Systèmes, ISP Systems and Vistory. It has already been selected as the winner of the #France2030 ‘Robots and Intelligent Machines of Excellence’ programme. The first machine will be installed at CETIM’s Printing Bourges centre, where it will undergo further validation.

More information www.addupsolutions.com