Leicester has taken its first steps into the future of the space industry as work began at the £100m Space Park Leicester with a ground-breaking ceremony attended by the Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP.

Opening in 2021, Space Park Leicester will create a regional cluster in the UK, integrating industry with academia. This landmark initiative is being developed by the University of Leicester in collaboration with partners including Leicester City Council and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP).
The LLEP has allocated £8.175m from its Local Growth Fund to support the development of phase one at Space Park Leicester – part of the Loughborough and Leicester Science and Innovation Enterprise Zone. Planning permission for the second phase of the development was granted in January, and will focus on research into AI and robot-assisted satellite production.
For further information https://le.ac.uk/spacepark

A specialist in the manufacture of custom prototypes and low-volume production parts is helping to make life easier for design engineers by guaranteeing specific dimensional tolerances for each type of plastic injection moulding resin.

After extensive testing at its Telford facility, Protolabs is offering customers a machining tolerance of ±0.08 mm with a resin tolerance of between 0.002 and 0.010 mm/mm, depending on the material. The tolerance guarantee applies to all 50 of its stocked resins, although the company can advise on the accuracy of the other 1500 that are available to customers across the world.
For further information www.protolabs.co.uk

National Apprenticeship Week 2020 earlier this month was celebrated by Yamazaki Mazak with an innovative twist, by allowing the company’s current crop of young engineering talent to turn the tables on senior management and interview them on their own careers in the manufacturing industry.

Mazak currently employs 48 apprentices and has trained in excess of 200 in recent years. In honour of NAW, the company invited a selection of its current class of 47 apprentices to put their own questions to a selection of senior staff, including Alan Mucklow, managing director UK & Ireland sales division.
For further information www.mazakeu.co.uk

XYZ Machine Tools’ drive to increase sales across mainland Europe has taken its next step with the appointment of Marcin Drozd as a directly employed area sales manager for the company’s range of ProtoTRAK-controlled and CNC machine tools.

The appointment is the first phase of a longer-term project in Poland that will see XYZ Machine Tools extend its direct presence with additional sales, service and applications support personnel.
Says Howard Bamforth, the company’s export sales director: “The potential for our products across Europe is significant, and while we’ve had success in certain countries working through distribution, the time is right to maximise the potential business. Directly employing a sales manager in Poland is the initial stage of that process. Marcin brings to the role extensive experience of our product range, particularly the ProtoTRAK control system, which we see as one of the key products for developing sales in the region.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

From Stand G205, 1st Machine Tool Accessories will show for the first time in the UK the Kitagawa Swift Klamp, a rigid work-holding product that uses the proven HSK tool interface to provide a secure, low-interference, quick-change clamping arrangement which resists bending forces generated during metal cutting.

Developed for five-axis machining applications but equally suited to use on three- and four-axis machines, the system consists of three parts – the clamping head, work holder and workpiece. The head is supplied either as a manually or automatically operated HSK clamp, while the work holder comprises an HSK interface at the base and multiple options at the top for holding the workpiece, including flange clamps and side clamps.
For further information www.1mta.com