Editor’s Pick

MACH hailed as roaring success

The UK’s national event for inspiring and connecting the manufacturing industry has once again been hailed as a triumph, with thousands of visitors filling the five halls at the NEC in Birmingham over the week-long show in April. The 2024 edition of the exhibition saw a 6% increase in the number of visitors meaning the full attendance of the event is rapidly approaching 30,000 people.

A highlight of the seminar programme was the launch of the MTA’s latest ‘True Impact of Manufacturing Report’. The report reveals the significant positive impact that manufacturing has on the UK economy, which is far greater than many think. Key findings of the report include: manufacturing accounts for £518bn of UK GDP and supports 7.3m jobs; ‘making things’ accounts for 34.5% of all UK goods and services exports; and themedian wage in manufacturing is 11% above the national average.

For further information www.machexhibition.com

XYZ takes £1m+ orders at MACH

XYZ Machine Tools took orders worth in excess of £1m at the recent MACH 2024 exhibition in Birmingham. Spanning 12 machines, this figure is expected to rise in the coming weeks and months as the company’s area sales managers work through the high number of enquiries generated at the show. The quantity of leads is up considerably on the previous MACH in 2022, providing a positive indication of robust investment levels across UK industry.

“We saw a similar number of visitors to the stand as MACH 2022, but the quality was better,” states Martin Burton, sales director at XYZ Machine Tools, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. “There were more people looking to make an immediate or near-future investment, rather than discussing plans further down the track. In particular, it was nice to meet a number of companies who are considering XYZ for the first time.”

For further information www.mtimagazine.com

Hexagon and Microsoft partner in cloud project

Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division is entering a strategic partnership with Microsoft that aims to redefine how engineers collaborate. The collaboration will also enable the discrete manufacturing industry to innovate faster, with more confidence, using new solutions that combine data from virtual engineering processes with real-world measurement of manufactured products.

Modern cloud infrastructure will connect manufacturing and engineering systems in Hexagon’s Nexus digital reality platform for manufacturers, and help employees increase their productivity through cloud-accelerated simulation and AI. Hexagon and Microsoft have partnered closely on the development and scaling of the open-source Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay service, allowing data created in one system to be immediately available to any other person or machine operating in another.

For further information www.hexagon.com

Q1 growth for subcontract market

Qimtek’s latest Contract Manufacturing Index shows that the UK subcontract market continued to grow in the first quarter. The index was up 4.5% in the first three months of 2024, building on the strong upswing at the end of 2023.Projects and budgets that had been on hold continue to be unlocked as manufacturers place orders and suppliers are busy quoting for work. February was the strongest month since March 2023.

The baseline for the index is 100, which represents the average size of the subcontract manufacturing market between 2014 and 2018.The CMI for Q1 2024 was 82, compared with 78.5 for the previous quarter.Machining accounted for 48% of the market, up 35% on the previous quarter, while fabrication represented 49%, down 5% on the previous quarter.

For further information www.qimtek.co.uk

XYZ machines elevate stairlift specialist

XYZ Machine Tools is helping Handicare to maintain the accuracy, rigidity and quality of its stairlifts by machining the mating surfaces of its tubular components using an XYZ RMX 3500 bed mill for straight sections and an XYZ RMX 4000 bed mill for curved sections.

Among Handicare’s UK manufacturing facilities is its Kingswinford, Birmingham plant, where the company designs and manufactures straight and curved stairlifts, producing more than 50 every day. The key element of each stairlift is a pair of tubular runners with welded gear racks. These support the seat and, with its pinion drive and rollers, allow it to transport the user smoothly and safely between floors.

Nabil Mohamed, production engineer at Handicare, says: “For straight stairlift sections, the tubes and gear racks are welded together by  a robot and cut to length. We leave an excess of 0.5 mm which we machine off using the XYZ RMX 3500. This process ensures that the gear profile on the rack is perfect when we join the tubes.”

The XYZ RMX 3500 is dedicated to straight sections and has a set of fixtures on the bed, each designed to lock into the gear profiles and position the tube in the exact position required to mill across the end and generate an accurate gear profile and tube length. The open design of the bed mill makes it possible to work with long tube sections that overhang the bed.

For curved profile stairlifts, the process is similar with tube sections machined on the XYZ RMX 4000. This machine has a larger bed of 1474 x 355 mm and fixtures loaded to suit the end-machining of curved sections.

For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com