Rockwood Composites has increased its workforce by 50% in the past six months. The company is also building two new 100 tonne presses, which will be on stream in October.

Presses are used by the firm to apply the heat and pressure needed to cure raw composites materials into components and structures for sectors such as aerospace, defence, nuclear and medical. In addition, the company has invested in a Hurco CNC machining centre, which is aimed at complementing the increase in capacity for pressing, moulding and laminating.
For further information www.rockwoodcomposites.com

Midland Power Press Services (MPPS), a specialist in mechanical power presses, has doubled its capacity after investing in a new building in Tipton.

MPPS, which provides repairs, spares, inspection and upgrades on over 100 different machines, now has over 10,000 sq ft of space split across dedicated machining and fitting shops. The £300,000 investment in the expansion and new machinery comes on the back of a sustained period of growth, with new contracts from the metalworking, automotive and white-goods sectors helping MPPS push towards a turnover of £3 million – the best 12 months
in its near 30-year history.
For further information www.mpps.co.uk

Ford Dagenham has invested in seven UR10 Universal Robots from RARUK Automation to automate the previously manual task of applying fasteners to engine blocks.

The fasteners are now applied automatically to engines that arrive on the production line every 30 seconds, across a 24-hour, three-shift operation. UR10 collaborative robots pick up fasteners and run them down threads in the engine blocks to secure exhaust manifolds in position. Development of the process and application was fully supported by RARUK Automation, including training.
For further information www.rarukautomation.com

Almost every component machined on the five Hurco three-axis machining centres at Scottish subcontractor Euro Precision is programmed on the shop floor with the assistance of user-friendly menus in the machines’ WinMAX control software.

If a profile is relatively complex, as is the case about half the time, it is imported as a DXF file generated in CAD, which the Hurco control reads directly. Sometimes, using the NC Merge feature within the control software, conversational cycles programmed via the CNC touchscreens are combined with data blocks created in an offline CAM system to define more intricate 3D features.
Euro Precision’s production manager Mark Ramsay says: “The Hurco software is very versatile, easy to use, and fast at producing three-axis prismatic machining cycles. So all of our quick turnaround work requiring a lead-time of, say, two weeks, goes through these machines. We simply take a drawing down to one of our setter-operators and very often they have the job running within an hour. It is faster than if we had to wait for the offline department to produce the program in our Esprit CAM system, as there is usually a backlog of work for our five-axis machines.”
Established over 25 years ago originally as Technicut (in Auchterarder) by Liam Torrance, who in 2009 took over Qualtronic located in the company’s current 30,000 sq ft premises located in Glenrothes, Fife, Euro Precision specialises in supplying complex precision components and assemblies. The current tally of Hurco machining centres at the subcontractor’s production facility includes a VM1, VM2 and VMX24 with WinMAX twin-screen control predecessor, Ultimax. Previously in operation at Technicut, these machines have been joined by a VM30i and a VM20i with a 4th axis.
For further information www.hurco.com

Hallamshire Engineering Services, a manufacturer of material handling equipment that includes pulleys, rollers and conveyors, is celebrating 20 years of supplying stainless steel drums to the food industry.

One of only a small number of conveyor manufacturers in the UK to be able to produce drums, pulleys and rollers in stainless steel, Hallamshire Engineering, which is part of Group Rhodes, supplies both standard and bespoke product sizes. The company is the original designer and manufacturer of the ‘Whittington’ spiral wound conveyor pulley.
For further information www.grouprhodes.co.uk