A recent restructuring of the management team within Güdel’s UK operation has set the scene for additional investment at the Coventry site to support further growth. The recent appointment of Troy McCourt as UK managing director, together with the recruitment of additional sales and engineering staff, will be followed by further investment in a number of areas, including the company’s IT systems. McCourt joins the company as a past user of Güdel gantry robot systems in a previous role.

“Having had experience of Güdel products and systems for a number of years, I was already impressed by the quality and longevity of the company’s gantry robots and linear-motion products,” he says. “I am delighted to have joined this highly-respected business and look forward to working with the team to take it to the next level.”
For further information www.gudel.com

The man who piloted the Starship Enterprise was given a glimpse of the scientific future at the University of Huddersfield recently. Actor Sir Patrick Stewart – who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV and film – is emeritus chancellor at the university. On his latest visit he was shown some of the scientific and technological research taking place.

Sir Patrick visited the university’s Future Metrology Hub, a £30m research centre that is aiming to transform UK industry by developing sensors embedded into machinery, leading to increases in accuracy. The hub – heavily backed by the EPSRC – is based in the university’s Centre for Precision Technologies. On his visit, Sir Patrick met the hub’s director professor Xiangqian Jiang and senior lecturer Dr Haydn Martin, plus many of its multi-disciplinary researchers who are harnessing new developments
in metrology and miniaturisation.
For further information www.hud.ac.uk

For three days during mid-June (13-15), visitors to the Trumpf 2017 open house will be introduced to what’s new in the company’s punching, laser and bending technologies, and be invited to take part in a programme of seminars focussed on smart production. The event will mark the UK launch of the TruMatic 1000 Fiber, a laser machine that comes with additional punching and forming functionality; the first model is due to be installed at a Bedfordshire fabricator in May.
For further information
www.uk.trumpf.com

XYZ Machine Tools has announced the appointment of Howard Bamforth to the role of export sales director, with the key focus of developing the potential for XYZ’s range of ProtoTrak-controlled machines across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Bamforth has 28 years’ experience in the machine tool business, including time working on machine design and development, project engineering, customer service/satisfaction and sales, both through distribution and direct with customers. He joins at an exciting time for the company, with XYZ just concluding what looks like being its seventh consecutive year of record sales.
For further information
www.xyzmachinetools.com

After a slack final quarter in 2017, the subcontract manufacturing market seems to be shrugging off concerns about Brexit. The value of the UK contract and subcontract market rose by nearly 11% in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the final quarter of 2016, according to the latest Qimtek Contract Manufacturing Index (CMI) figures. Machining proved particularly strong in the first quarter of 2017 – up 15% on Q4 2016. It was down by 8% though compared with a particularly strong period for machining in the first three months of 2016. Fabrication more than held its own, up 13% on the previous quarter and 19% on the equivalent quarter last year.
For further information
www.qimtek.co.uk