Aston Martin Lagonda last month opened its new manufacturing facility in St Athan, Wales. First Minister of Wales, Rt Hon Mark Drakeford joined Aston Martin Lagonda president and group CEO, Dr Andy Palmer, at a ceremony to officially open the plant.

While Gaydon continues to be the home of the company’s sports car production, St Athan is the home of Aston Martin’s first SUV, the DBX. Upon the commencement of full production at St Athan in the second quarter of 2020, the company will have created up to 600 skilled jobs, rising to 750 at peak production.
In 2016, Aston Martin Lagonda chose the 90-acre St Athan site to be its newest centre of manufacturing excellence in the UK. Phase I of construction saw the creation of the customer and staff reception areas, administration and management offices, and the employee restaurant. Phase II got underway in spring 2017 after the ceremonial handover of the three super-hangars that now house the new manufacturing facility.
The final phase to fit out the now-converted super-hangars got underway in late 2018, ready for pre-production to commence in 2019.
For further information www.astonmartinlagonda.com

Martin Barber has been appointed to the role of premium product sales manager at XYZ Machine Tools, where he will have responsibility for sales of the company’s five-axis machining centres and the Robo-Tend machine-tending system.

Barber brings to the role over 30 years’ experience working in production environments and machine-tool sales.
“Martin’s experience in selling high-value multi-axis machine tools will be a terrific addition to our team,” says Nigel Atherton, managing director. “To win over potential customers who may not be traditional XYZ buyers, we need a dedicated resource in this area.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

PP Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd has bought a plasma and flame cutting machine from Kerf Developments that measures 39 m in length.

To get a scale of the workload at the Batley-based heavy engineering business, it is processing an average of 400 to 500 tonnes of steel every month, and almost 40% of this material is run through the new Kerf RUR4500. It is this reliance on the Kerf plasma and flame cutting machine that justified its acquisition. The level of investment at PP Profiles (West Yorkshire) Ltd now stands at more than £2m in the past two years.
The reason behind the investment in the colossal Kerf RUR4500 was due to two older 12 x 2.5 m flame cutting machines – and a 6 m plasma machine – proving unreliable, creating an inefficient workflow.
Commercial director Daniel Morley says: “We specified the Kerf RUR4500 with a single high definition 400 A plasma cutting head on a 12 x 4 m bed and a two-machine 24 x 4 m bed that consists of both a six-head and a four-head flame cutting gantry – all in a single 39 x 4 m cell. This allows us to load much larger jobs and has opened us up to new markets, as parts over 12 m long are not uncommon.”
The arrival of the Kerf RUR4500 machine made the previous two flame and one plasma machine surplus to requirements, reducing the required floor area and improving efficiency and workflow.
“Now, we have four people running the three machines within the Kerf RUR4500 cell,” says Morley. “This workflow configuration has reduced our processing times by at least 50%.”
For further information www.kerfdevelopments.com

Machining centre and lathe manufacturer Hurco Europe has reported its second-best annual turnover ever, only slightly below that of the company’s record year in 2018.

The announcement comes following Hurco Europe’s latest open house in December, which was attended by representatives from 53 manufacturers. Held at the company’s recently opened 26,000 sq ft headquarters, showroom and technical centre in High Wycombe, the open house attracted 88 visitors from the UK, Ireland and Sweden.
The event saw three orders placed for machining centres, including a double-column model. David Waghorn, managing director of Hurco Europe, says: “We were pleased to preview a cobot [collaborative robot] following our group’s purchase earlier this year of Pittsburgh manufacturer, ProCobot. It was automatically feeding one of our VMX30UHSi five-axis machining centres with aluminium billets from a table, and returning finish-machined components.”
For further information www.hurco.co.uk

A prominent cornerstone of the Okuma trade fair booth at the recent EMO 2019 exhibition was taken up by the company’s large MCR-S double-column machining centre. The machine is predestined for the die and mould industry as it combines high productivity, dimensional accuracy and high surface quality, reports Okuma.

With these properties, the MCR-S can rough, finish and fine-finish a workpiece in a single set up. The machine’s accuracy relies on a number of hardware and software technologies. One of these technologies is a swivel image sensor that measures the tool’s cutting edge. As a result, tool change related cutting edge offsets can be reduced to less than 10 µm.
According to Okuma, surface quality is achieved with the company’s intelligent ‘Hyper-Surface’ technology. By automatically detecting and correcting errors in the machining data, the application creates extremely smooth surfaces that are said to rarely need manual post-processing.
The high manufacturing quality has a positive impact on the machine’s productivity. Pablo Liechti, product manager, provides an example: “We have a customer who saved 38 hours in total when machining a large die mould with the MCR-S. They benefit from a shorter finishing cycle, fewer hours spent on polishing and little need for matching the press dies to their counterparts.”
For further information www.okuma.eu