As Britain’s manufacturers grapple with an uncertain steel market, attention is increasingly turning to how every tonne of material can be used more effectively. With import restrictions, fluctuating prices and supply chain pressures affecting procurement strategies, reducing waste is becoming as important as securing supply.

For many engineering businesses, this means examining every stage of production to prevent valuable materials being lost through scrap, rework or rejected components. Lye-based surface finishing specialist Midland Deburr & Finish believes finishing processes have an increasingly important role to play in protecting margins.

Chris Arrowsmith, managing director of Midland Deburr & Finish, says manufacturers are becoming more focused on the lifetime value of every component entering production: “Material costs have become a much bigger conversation over the past few years. When manufacturers are paying more for steel, aluminium and other specialist materials, they naturally expect to recover as many finished components as possible from every production run.”

Arrowsmith believes deburring and cleaning should be viewed as critical quality processes rather than secondary operations. Burrs, sharp edges or surface contamination can affect assembly, coating performance or inspection, potentially resulting in expensive rework after significant manufacturing value has already been added.

Midland Deburr & Finish provides vibratory deburring, vapour and solvent degreasing, ultrasonic cleaning and component impregnation for customers across aerospace, automotive, defence, electronics and general engineering.

According to Arrowsmith, controlled finishing processes can improve batch-to-batch consistency while reducing the variability associated with manual processing.

“Finishing may be one of the final stages of production, but it has a significant influence on product quality, manufacturing efficiency and ultimately the value manufacturers achieve from every component they produce,” he concludes.

More information www.midlanddeburrandfinish.co.uk

Fives has introduced the Landis TTG 3000 twin-turret grinder, a new technology platform engineered to meet the growing challenge of achieving uncompromising precision while maintaining flexibility in modern manufacturing.

Developed by combining Fives’ global expertise from the UK and USA, the Landis TTG 3000 brings multiple grinding processes into a single machine, delivering the stability, control and adaptability required in today’s production environments.

As production demands continue to evolve across industries such as bearings, aerospace, medical, optics, and energy, components are more complex, tolerances are tighter, and batch sizes are increasingly variable. Traditional grinding methods, reliant on multiple machines and repeated re-clamping, introduce variability and inefficiency. The Landis TTG 3000 addresses these challenges by reducing process steps while maintaining consistent, micron-level accuracy.

At the core of the TTG 3000 is its patented twin-turret architecture, enabling true multi-surface machining within a single set up. One turret carries the grinding wheel, while the opposing turret supports the workpiece, providing access to complex geometries without repositioning. This configuration reduces cumulative error, improves process control, and enables efficient transitions between components, materials, and batch sizes.

Equipped with advanced control and digital capabilities, the TTG 3000 supports multi-axis co-ordination, process simulation, and integration into automated and Industry 4.0 environments. By simplifying production and improving process reliability, it enables manufacturers to increase productivity while maintaining full control over quality and performance.

Ultimately, users can accelerate their manufacturing process and cut operating expenses with the Landis TTG 3000. This twin-turret, multi-spindle solution consolidates multiple operations within a small space, allowing customers to achieve the precision grinding of ODs, IDs, faces, tapers, raceways, concentric, and eccentric diameters to sub-micron tolerances – all in a single clamping.More information www.fivesgroup.com

British high-tech company Domin is transforming hydraulic technology with efficient, 3D-printed components, supported by the precision of a Studer S33 universal cylindrical grinding machine.

Based at the Domin Technology Centre near Bristol, the company develops advanced servo valves and high-performance pumps for various sectors. Domin uses metal additive manufacturing to create complex, flow-optimised internal structures that would be impossible to produce conventionally. The resulting hydraulic systems can deliver efficiency gains of up to 90% compared with traditional solutions.

However, the precision required for Domin’s products extends beyond 3D printing. Its maraging steel components require accurate post-processing to align the control edges of valve spools with the windows of their housings to within a few micrometres. Previously, this was achieved using wire EDM, but the process was too slow to support increasing production volumes.

“We were faced with the problem of scaling an extremely precise but slow process for our growing production,” explains Cameron Adams, manufacturing engineering manager at Domin. “We needed a machine that would reliably guarantee the highest precision while offering the flexibility to combine different machining operations.”

Domin selected the Studer S33, which now grinds the diameters and fine control edges of valve spools. On the S6 Pro valve, for example, the required diameter tolerance is just 3 µm. During acceptance testing, deviation across 50 components was only 0.0006 mm using in-process measurement.

The S33 has also transformed productivity. Machining time for the S6 Pro valve has been reduced from almost one hour using EDM to just five minutes with cylindrical grinding. Its two-wheel configuration also allows diameters and shoulders to be ground in a single operation, eliminating wheel changes and tailstock movements.

With production volumes set to increase, Domin is now planning automated part loading.

More information www.studer.com

Precision Micro has secured a major contract to manufacture chemically etched flow plates for data centre cooling. The seven-figure order will see the UK-based chemical etching specialist supply plates for advanced thermal management systems, following several years of investment in capacity to meet growing demand for compact, efficient cooling technologies.

Compact plate heat exchangers use chemically etched flow plates to transfer heat within a highly compact structure. They are increasingly being adopted where conventional heat exchanger technologies can be too large, heavy or inefficient. For datacentres, this is becoming increasingly important as higher compute loads drive demand for more effective thermal management.

“This contract is the result of a strategy we put in place several years ago,” explains Ben Kitson, head of business development at Precision Micro. “We identified growing demand for compact, high-efficiency cooling across several emerging energy applications and invested in the unique capacity and infrastructure needed to support it.”

He adds: “As power densities increase, cooling technologies must become more efficient, compact and reliable. Chemically etched flow plates are a strong fit due to their ability to achieve high feature density and complex geometries.”

Precision Micro has been involved in advanced heat exchanger plate manufacture since the early development of the technology. Recent investment has focused on increasing large-sheet capacity, expanding etching infrastructure and supporting the chemical management required to process high volumes of material.

The company can chemically etch large-format plates up to 1.5 m long and 610 mm wide, with material thicknesses up to 2.5 mm. This capacity enables manufacturers to produce larger, thicker plates while maintaining the accuracy, repeatability and burr-free finish associated with chemical etching.

More information www.precisionmicro.com