South Ribble Borough Council and Ribble Valley Borough Council have granted permission to the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) to build and equip a £20m state-of-the-art facility in a landmark location at the heart of the Samlesbury Aerospace Enterprise Zone, one of four zones that make up the wider Lancashire Advanced Manufacturing and Energy Cluster.

The 4500 sq m facility, which will have a focus on vehicle electrification, battery assembly and lightweighting technologies, is being built with capital funding provided through the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (LEP)’s Growth Deal. In addition, a £2.5m revenue grant from the European Structural Investment Fund (ESIF), matched with £1.6m from the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVM Catapult), will secure the creation of a high-performing technical R&D team that will work with manufacturing companies and their supply chains.
For further information www.amrc.co.uk

The £20m Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre Cymru (AMRC Cymru) has opened for business in Broughton, north Wales.

This state-of-the-art centre will be a catalyst for growth and jobs in Deeside, north Wales and the wider cross-border and ‘Northern Powerhouse’ region. AMRC Cymru will provide businesses with a new level of research and development opportunities and support. The facility was officially opened by First Minister Mark Drakeford and Economy and North Wales Minister Ken Skates.
AMRC Cymru will enable businesses to access advanced technologies, helping them to drive improvements in productivity, performance and quality. Situated in the Deeside Enterprise Zone, the facility will focus on advanced manufacturing sectors, including aerospace, automotive, nuclear and food. It is predicted that the new centre could increase GVA to the Welsh economy by as much as £4bn over the next 20 years.
For further information https://is.gd/beyura

Reaction Engines and Nammo UK have signed an agreement for the supply of a rocket plume heat exchanger for the UK’s new National Space Propulsion Test Facility.

Steve Gill, chief commercial officer at Reaction Engines, says: “Reaction Engines is delighted to supply Nammo UK with a world-class heat exchanger that will cool extreme temperatures in a very compact envelope, and which will be one of the first large-scale commercial applications of the knowledge and technology we’ve developed. This project
shows Reaction Engines has world-leading thermal management capability.”
For further information www.reactionengines.co.uk

At the end of last month, 48 leading German companies from the machine tool and metalworking industries were guests at Metalex in Bangkok.

Metalex is the largest metalworking trade fair in the ASEAN region and, for the first time, Germany had been named a partner country. The German presentation focused on an industry exhibition and a joint stand, showcasing UMATI (universal machine tool interface). The ‘UMATI@Metalex’ special show featured three machines from DMG Mori, Heller and Trumpf, which were connected for live production at the event.
For further information https://vdw.de/en/

At the recent EMO 2019 exhibition in Hanover, Tornos presented intelligent and interactive solutions that it says not only meet customer needs, but also anticipate them.

Beyond machines, Tornos offers production workflow solutions, including its Industry 4.0-enabling TISIS software, which allows programming and communicating directly with the machine. The user is guided intuitively to ensure optimal use of all available tools.
On Tornos’ stand, expert engineers and R&D team members demonstrated the range of possibilities offered by the intelligent software, which the company is constantly developing for connected production.
Additionally, Tornos was among 50 machine tool manufacturers from all over the world demonstrating at EMO how UMATI – universal machine tool interface – makes machine data usable. Today’s customers expect to integrate new machines into their own information technology (IT) ecosystems without any difficulty whatsoever.
The networking of machines, systems and software is one of the most important trends in manufacturing right now. Today’s customers expect to be able to integrate new machines into their own information technology (IT) ecosystems with no difficulty. UMATI does this easily, quickly and securely on the basis of the Open Platform Communications (OPC) Unified Architecture (UA) international interoperability standard.
For over two years, a team of various machine-tool manufacturers has been working on developing this uniform language for machine tools. Together with control manufacturers, the companies aimed at making it as user friendly as possible. Along with all other UMATI project participants, Tornos was connected to a central dashboard. Furthermore, 18 software and data evaluation service providers demonstrated how this information could be used to generate added value for customers.
For further information www.tornos.com