Investing in the future of its business in terms of skills and capacity, BG Engineering is actively recruiting apprentices and has just invested £75,000 with XYZ Machine Tools to create a machining cell that will help apprentices to hone their skills.

The cell comprises an XYZ SMX 5000 bed mill and an XYZ SLX 355 ProTurn lathe. Both are controlled by XYZ’s ProtoTrak control system, which offers simple-to-program capability that makes apprentice training and the machining of one-off and small batch parts straightforward.
“The XYZ machines are unlike anything else we have on the shop floor,” says Chris Brown, director of Cooper Brown Enterprises, which bought a strategic stake in BG Engineering last year. “They provide the perfect introduction to CNC machining and, our apprentices are making full use of the ProtoTrak control’s features, such as TRAKing, as well as learning manual machining skills. The apprentices can gain experience of the ‘feel’ you only get by winding handles to produce parts – thanks to the XYZ machine’s ability to operate
in full CNC or manual mode.”
For further information www.xyzmachinetools.com

Turnkey production solutions provider Geo Kingsbury Machine Tools Ltd, which until recently was best known as Geo Kingsbury, will with immediate effect trade under the name Kingsbury.

The company is sole agent in the UK and Ireland, and more recently in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, for a range of German machining centre and lathe builders, as well as a French additive manufacturing machine producer. Managing director Richard Kingsbury says: “We wanted uniformity in the way we are perceived by industry throughout the country’s into which we sell.”
For further information www.kingsburyuk.com

The Advanced Engineering show, which takes place at the NEC at the end of this month, has published its league table of top 20 high-value manufacturing hotspots in the UK.

The table places Sheffield at the top of the pile, narrowly beating last year’s winner – Bristol – by just two points. The highest new entry this year is Cambridge, which comes in at number 4. Other new entrants are Northampton, Poole, Telford, Swindon, Banbury and Chesterfield. The biggest improvers in the table since last year are Milton Keynes, which moves from 10th to 3rd, and Nottingham, which moves from 8th to 5th.
For further information www.advancedengineeringuk.com

As part of its strategic drive to infiltrate the aerospace market and introduce the aviation sector to its cutting tool solutions, Tungaloy UK has joined both the Midlands Aerospace Alliance (MAA) and the West of England Aerospace Forum (WEAF).

Tungaloy will now be actively participating in events and collaborative projects to further raise awareness of the Japanese cutting tool brand. The company has extensive knowledge and experience of the global aviation and defence industries, and by joining both organisations, Tungaloy is looking to transfer its expertise, knowledge base and product lines to members of the groups.
For further information www.tungaloy.com/uk

RPI UK, a specialist developer and manufacturer of precision positioning devices for high-accuracy rotary and angular inspection systems, has supplied five integrated measurement assembly platforms (iMAPs) to Rolls-Royce and its approved MRO facilities.

iMAP, which is said to reduce inspection times by 90% and improve gauge repeatability and reproducibility by up to 10 times, will be used by Rolls-Royce to measure and assemble engine turbine rotors at its sites in Derby and Germany.
Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, which carries out MRO of the Rolls-Royce Trent engine, has also purchased an RPI iMAP machine – the first one sold to a Rolls-Royce approved MRO facility.
Jim Palmer, RPI’s sales manager, says: “We’ve been working with Rolls-Royce for over 30 years so its great news that both Rolls-Royce, and their approved MRO facilities, are choosing to invest in iMAP, which has been independently verified to give significant operational improvements over traditional measurement methods.”
iMAP’s data acquisition software AccuScan enables manufacturers to measure up to 4000 data points on up to eight surfaces simultaneously (per revolution), thereby significantly reducing process times compared with other available methods. This significantly improved inspection data is then used by IntelliStack, iMAP’s rotor stacking program, to solve the mathematical problem of how to best assemble a multi-stage rotor assembly and achieve minimum runout or unbalance of the finished rotor.
Combining a motorised
high-precision air bearing rotary axis, rigid column unit, anti-vibration granite base and AccuScan multi-channel circular geometry inspection software, IMAP is intended to deliver productivity improvements in turbine rotor assembly.
For further information www.rpiuk.com