It has been 16 years since the Gulf region’s steel fabrication and metalworking industry changed the way it did business – when SteelFab made its debut.

A lot has changed in the intervening years, and the event continues to steer the industry through the ups and downs of the economy, and the market. Over the past 16 years SteelFab has grown with the industry and, along the way, expanded its geographical footprint far and wide.
At SteelFab 2020 (Sharjah, 13-16 January), nearly 300 exhibitors from over 20 countries are expected to fill six halls across 11,000 sq m of space. Over the course of the three days, the organiser is expecting close to 7000 visitors from around 70 different countries to attend the show. Special focus areas will include welding and cutting, machine tools, tube and pipe, and wear resistance. SteelFab will also host seminars, technical presentations and live displays.
For further information https://steelfabme.com/

Delivering a balanced machining portfolio that matches present and predicted workflows is the current investment policy of A Fawcett Precision Engineers. This ethos at the Elland, West Yorkshire company gained fresh impetus when Joanne Thompson took over the running of the company following her father’s retirement in 2009.

“We had a wide range of lathes when I took over the business, but all of them were manual and many were getting old and creating bottlenecks in production,” she says. “To address this, in 2012 we bought a second-hand CNC lathe, along with a new SLX 555 ProTurn lathe from XYZ Machine Tools. And, while the XYZ SLX 555 is still with us and working well, the old CNC lathe had seen better days and needed replacing.”
As a result, March 2019 saw the arrival of a new XYZ TC400 turning centre with Siemens 828D ShopTurn control. The machine has a maximum swing of 600 mm and is the largest turning centre in the XYZ range.
During the summer, following Thompson’s participation and graduation from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme, the incentive and confidence was there for more investment, resulting in a further order being placed with XYZ Machine Tools. The company ordered the latest ProTurn lathe, an RLX425 with RX ProtoTrak control, which was delivered in July.
“You have to be realistic and confident about what you can do for customers and not promise something you can’t deliver, which is why we’ve continued to focus on low-to-medium batch quantities in sectors where we have extensive experience,” says Thompson. “The XYZ machines meet our needs perfectly for this type of work. Having the machines has made us more cost-effective, reduced our labour costs and helped us become more competitive.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Advanced Engineering 2019 wrapped up for another year on 31 October, after welcoming over 550 exhibitors and more than 15,000 attendees, a 5% rise from the previous year. The event showcased more technologies and product innovations than ever before, particularly with the introduction of its Medical Device Engineering Zone.

Mike Duffield, regional sales manager at one of the show’s exhibitors, Renishaw, found the new Medical Device Engineering Zone to be particularly profitable. “Renishaw has exhibited at Advanced Engineering for a number of years because it has always been a great opportunity to network and get high-quality business leads,” he says. “The addition of the Medical Device Engineering Zone has helped us to forge new business relationships and showcase the range of potential applications that our products can help to fulfil.”
For further information
www.easyfairs.com/advanced-engineering-2019

Vision Engineering, a manufacturer of visual inspection and measurement technologies, has been awarded the Productronica Innovation Award, for its 3D visualisation product: the DRV-Z1.

The DRV-Z1 was chosen by a panel of experts as the winner of the Inspection & Quality Cluster award, for demonstrating significant technical development and cutting-edge technical integration, efficiency and design. Vision’s Deep Reality Viewer (DRV) is a world-first technology which produces high-resolution 3D stereo images without the need for a monitor, headset or glasses.
For further information www.visioneng.com

Experts in metrology and inspection at the Coventry-based Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) are hosting a free event that intends to help manufacturers improve their processes and product quality through the latest metrology innovations.

The ‘Focus on Metrology’ event on 27 November will highlight the latest research and thinking in metrology developed by the MTC, its academic partners and leading industrialists. Notably, the event will centre on the important collaborations driving metrology forward, as well as measurement and inspection technologies which can benefit UK manufacturers.
Speakers from a range of sectors will provide an industry perspective on how metrology and inspection techniques are helping to improve competitiveness, processes, and component quality.
“Inspection techniques are vital to high-value manufacturing and, when implemented properly, can mean that products are safer, stronger, and perform better than the competition,” says MTC technology director Ken Young.
For further information https://is.gd/qinoni