EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Showtime for motor spindles

Following MA Ford Europe’s appointment as UK distributor and technical partner by Japanese manufacturer Nakanishi, its range of high-speed motor spindles was unveiled at MACH 2024 in Birmingham last month. This is the latest appointment for MA Ford Europe, which now handles the HES, iSpeed3 and HTS products from Nakanishi’s range of electric and air-turbine units, which are capable of spindle speeds up to 150,000 rpm. The units mount in CNC machine spindles with various shank types, including BT, HSK A63, IT and straight.

For further information www.mafordeurope.com

Heller heads to Farnborough

The UK subsidiary of German horizontal machining centre (HMC) manufacturer, Heller Maschinenfabrik, will be exhibiting at the Farnborough International Airshow 2024 (22-26 July) as part of the Midlands Aerospace Alliance stand in Hall 1. Redditch-based Heller Machine Tools, which manufactures selected HMC models at its UK site for global markets, is celebrating its 50thanniversary this year.There will be much for the company to promote to the aerospace sector, not least its new F 5000 and F 6000 five-axis production centres, although the machines will not be on the stand.

For further information www.heller.biz

Sertec Group wins metal-forming ‘Oscar’

A supplier of millions of components every day for cars, lorries and engines has been named as the Confederation of British Metalforming’s Company of the Year. Coleshill-headquartered Sertec Group, which employs over 2200 people across 10 global locations, beat off strong competition from the sector to win the main award, with judges impressed by ‘its journey to excellence’. This journey has seen the company enjoy a major increase in productivity, improvements in OTIF(on-time delivery in full) and the implementation of a comprehensive employee engagement approach.

For further informationwww.thecbm.co.uk

UR and MiR open new robotics hub

Universal Robots, a Danish collaborative robot (cobot) company, and MiR, a Danish manufacturer of AMRs (autonomous mobile robots), have open their new 20,000 sqm headquarters in Odense.Partners from UR and MiR’s global ecosystems attended the event, including NVIDIA and Siemens. The opening included a panel discussion featuring Deepu Talla, VP of robotics and edge computing at NVIDIA, Rainer Brehm, CEO of Siemens factory automation, and Ujjwal Kumar, group president of Teradyne Robotics. They discussed the use of physical AI, underscoring the transformative power of automation for workplaces.

For further information www.universal-robots.com

Hurco takes £2m orders at MACH

While the total number of visitors to the Hurco stand at MACH this year was down on two years previously, the quality of enquiries for new machines and the volume of business concluded more than made up for the lower attendance. Managing director David Waghorn says: “Although we welcomed fewer people onto our stand this time, it was clear that those who did visit had been planning and budgeting carefully. The result was a much more successful show than two years ago.”

He adds: “Machine tool technology increases in value year on year, which means people tend to consider investments ever more carefully, so it can be as much two years later that an enquiry results in a sale.”However, based on orders in excess of £2m at the show, plus more than 200 quotations, Hurco will certainly be returning in 2026.” For further information www.hurco.co.uk