Liberty, part of GFG Alliance, a global industrial, metals and energy group, has announced its investment in a £10m global technology centre in Leamington Spa.

By the beginning of 2020, in time for the 100th anniversary of the start of automotive production at the site, all of Liberty’s design and manufacturing for braking systems – currently in an adjacent plant – will be transferred to the modern facility, which will also become home to its wider research, design and product development activities.
Among the advanced manufacturing equipment will be £5m of new CNC lathes, machining centres and other equipment bought since the acquisition of 920E (originally Automotive Products). The investment includes two Traub turning centres built in Germany and supplied through Kingsbury, which have raised to eight the number of Traub turning machines on site.
First of the latest lathes to arrive in Leamington was a 32 mm bar capacity TNL 32, which has the notable ability to be changed over quickly from sliding-head to fixed-head operation. The second machine to arrive was a TNX 65, another twin-spindle, twin-turret turn-mill lathe but for fixed-head turning only, which is capable of producing parts from bar up to 65 mm diameter.
Production group leader, Bill Dhesi says: “The latest Traub machines produce parts more than 25% faster than the existing models due to their higher spindle speeds, faster axis movements, quicker turret indexing and higher power driven tooling.”
Many of the components find their way into brake systems, calipers and actuation products for marques such as JLR, Mini, Morgan and other major automotive brands. The parts are supplied to production lines mainly in the UK and to outlets for aftermarket sale.
For further information www.kingsburyuk.com

A specialist supplier of components to the aerospace, automotive and oil and gas sectors has invested in the latest five-axis technology and CADCAM software to reduce set-up times and achieve lights-out manufacturing.

Rotec Engineering, which offers fixed-head and sliding-head capabilities from its facility in Evesham, has installed a Nakamura NTRX 300 from the Engineering Technology Group (ETG), building on a long-term relationship with the machine tool supplier.
“In our endeavour to move forward and expand, we wanted a machine with all of these attributes that we could also program directly from our CAM system with full five-axis turning,” says Paul Butler, managing director and owner of Rotec. “We found that just focusing on cycle time wasn’t the right way forward for our business. There is often a lot of downtime between jobs, so the whole idea of this investment is to apply the CAM system and machine flexibility to reduce our set-up times.
“Now, we can set-up complex jobs very quickly and, with a bar feed and auxiliary loader, we can run these challenging parts unmanned and they come off the machine complete,” he adds.
ETG, which is the UK’s exclusive supplier of Nakamura technology, worked with Rotec to source a machine that matched its exact requirements, with the NTRX 300’s milling head and two rotating spindles proving extremely attractive. The challenge was to get all the technology to work seamlessly for the company so that the machines could be trusted to run when employees are not on site.
For further information www.engtechgroup.com