A roundup of the exhibitors displaying at Southern Manufacturing
Southern Manufacturing took place from the 4th to the 6th of February taking place at Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre. At the show were over 860 exhibitors who all wanted to show off their products to the world. EngineerLive spoke to a few exhibitors to learn more about their products.
Alek Arcadia of the Interface Group spoke about his company’s precision services. Arcadia said: “What we mainly do is a lot of turning and milling, we do any sorts of parts, from massive ones to tiny ones… We do these in massive batches of 3,000. We still do the larger items in large batches, but we don’t get this as often.”
Arcadia adds: “We’re a big fan of doing anything and everything. You [the client] will send us a part [request], and we will find some way of machining it. Very rarely do we say ‘no, we can’t do this’ and even then we are reluctant.”
Any sort of materials can be used in machining to create parts such as; grade five titanium, aluminium’s, brasses, and plastics. The company sources its own raw materials to be used in manufacturing which are then used in their machines to create the parts.
Arcadia expanded on the company’s precision manufacturing and said: “We have some precise parts, we make parts with tiny 0.4-millimetre hole, and it's centric with the rest of the part by 0.01-[millimetre]. We use some very small stuff with some very tight tolerances.”
Vacuum science and general science are the main beneficiaries of Interface Group’s manufacturing. Recently they have been branching out into aerospace but the company is still mainly vacuum sciences along with oil and gas.
An assembly service is also available, as the company keeps its commitment to doing everything and anything. This is not the focus of the company, however, they have the capacity to do it and is a service they can offer to customers. Recently Interface Group undertook a ‘massive’ assembly project where they brought together some cabling from PCB and machine parts and created a whole part for their client.
The need for precision inspection is growing as the complexity of manufacturing continues to grow. Ensuring engineer's designs function as intended, it requires products to be up to standard.
Geoff Jackson, business development director at Bowers Group Limited demonstrated a new series of field-of-view inspection machines from Baty named FV series. The machine on show was the FV 3020, having a measuring range of 300 by 200 in the XY.
Jackson said: “This machine is a dual-field machine, there is a large field of view with a three-micron accuracy, and a smaller field of view with a one-micron accuracy. The machine also has an optional rotary axel along with an optional confocal probe. The confocal laser probe grants an X-axis measurement capability.”
The machine is capable of measuring pocket heights making it best for quality assurance as it can check dimensions on manufactured components. The benefit to the system is its speed. A flat 2D surface can have hundreds of dimensions scanned in a second, whilst a batch inspection can be done in seconds.
Jackson added: “There's no skill involved, it’s a really de-skilled process. The software has the ability to recognise a part you’ve place on the stage and you just press the measure button, it’ll look up the part in its library to see if it can find a registered image of a part that matches. If it does, it can pull up the right programme that contains all the control data and tolerancing. It can measure the part without any interaction from the operator.”
For 3D parts, automation is also possible. This is where the optional rotary fixture becomes important, as this allows for the object to be moved through the field of view, allowing the camera to capture all necessary images to scan it correctly.
Developing better technology is only possible if it does not fail when needed. Motherboards specialised in reliability are becoming a more vital ingredient to manufacturers, especially in extreme application conditions.
David Cooling, sales manager at NCAB Group UK, talked through his company's PCBs. Cooling said: “We make for a lot of industries where failure isn’t an option. A lot of military, defence, aerospace, environments where PCB can't fail.”
Cooling continued: “We go above and beyond in our quality procedures to ensure the best quality products get to our customers. We have a very stringent quality specification that all the factories we work with have to sign up to and that’s heavily audited by our factory management teams.”
The company itself does not design the circuitry itself, instead, it supplies the boards to manufacturers who then go on to add electronics and circuitry to the boards. This results in the company not being privy to all of the applications of its boards and where they all end up. However, some of the applications include night vision goggles and a listening device stone.
Cooling systems and fans are becoming more prevalent throughout industries, with more complex hardware requiring better cooling systems and increased fan power.
John Roe, sales director at Micronel UK, explained his company's technology: “Micronel is a fan and blower manufacturing company. We have three ranges of products. We’ve got the flat cooling fans… they are good for airflow, they are not cheap but they are not good at overcoming any resistance in a system.”
Roe then demonstrated another product range, which a bigger motor can be fitted into, having a larger pressure capability. The final of the three was the radio blower, otherwise known as the central bugle fan. This fan ‘whips’ the air in perpendicular to the outlet and then the fast spinning impeller creates a high pressure. This is typically used in pressurising air-moving applications.
Further applications for these motors include air extraction, with current examples of applications including surgical flow extractors in hospitals. The motors have also been used in picking up and holding applications.
Southern Manufacturing will return next year, with registration already being open for attendees.
