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Posts Tagged ‘Components’

Some people may be under the impression that almost all of the precision engineering that goes on in the UK is located in the Midlands or the North of England. However, these people may be missing a great opportunity, by not considering Norfolk as an alternative region for precision engineering services.

It is true that the Midlands and the North of England were once the backbone of the engineering sector in this country. These areas had traditionally been extremely biased towards manufacturing, to the extent where a huge percentage of the local workforce in these areas would be employed in this sector. Large engineering factories were widespread in these parts of the country, and therefore most of the country’s engineering focus was centred around them. However, in the last 20 or 30 years all this has changed, and there are various reasons for this. The decline in the industry as a whole, and the changes to working practices that this has brought, has hit large companies hardest. With such a concentration of companies in one or two areas, and with so many engineers moving out of engineering and into other sectors, customers have been forced to look elsewhere for their precision engineering.

One area which has benefited from this is East Anglia, and Norfolk in particular. No longer just a rural area which was entirely devoted to farming, Norfolk has developed into a thriving engineering base. The Oil and Gas industry is very involved in Norfolk, and other sectors such as meat and crop processing, automotive engineering and the chemical industry play a large part in the Norfolk economy. All of these sectors are very heavily biased towards engineering, and require very high levels of precision. This has led to a situation where there are some excellent precision engineering companies in Norfolk, with very highly skilled engineers.

One such company is Machined Precision Components Ltd, based in Watton in Norfolk, who can list a number of customers in these sectors who are locally based. They can also boast customers all over the country who have a requirement for their precision engineering services.

As director Nick Overton explains: “We provide a highly professional service to many sectors of precision engineering, not only in Norfolk, but throughout the country. We place great emphasis on three areas: Firstly we produce a top quality component, we provide it for a competitive price, and we do this with very short lead times.”

In fact their lead times are so short that they sometimes can provide a next day delivery to customers for items which may be produced at very short notice. “We can often receive an order on one day, produce the components on the same day, and then deliver it to the customer the next day” explains Mr Overton. “We can do this for any customer within the UK, wherever they are based, and with no compromise in quality. This flexibility means that we can provide a quality service to customers that they may not be able to find elsewhere”

Precision Engineering in Norfolk continues to go from strength to strength, and sometimes this area of the country can provide a quality of service that cannot be found elsewhere.

New product development and innovation is much more difficult and time consuming than most other business activities. Automotive rapid prototyping greatly enhances learning speed and reduces the risk of new automotive parts development.

Historically, the automotive industry has been using rapid prototyping as an important tool in the automotive parts design process. The extremely fast-paced automotive design cycles require an extremely fast prototyping system which can produce car parts fast and inexpensively.

The main objective of automotive prototyping is to learn quickly: how a new automotive product behaves in its natural working environment, before transferring the prototype to the production line. Many times, mistakes are learned only after a new automotive part is launched. This is the main explanation for poor automotive parts design, from product mismatch, poor engineering and function or finish, and overpriced production. In order to accelerate the learning curve, before these costly automotive prototyping mistakes are made, one must accelerate and facilitate feedback loops from tests in the lab and market trials.

Automotive Manufacturing Technologies

Working with an assortment of rapid prototyping equipment, automotive prototyping engineers utilize the most advanced 3D printers, in their quest for perfect form, function and utility. Working in advanced manufacturing centers, the automotive engineers use the technology to verify what they are doing, and, equally important, to save tremendous amounts of time, and money.

Automotive Rapid Prototyping Compresses Development Time

The advantages of using 3D rapid prototyping model creation versus viewing a cad/cam model on a computer screen are palpable. Automotive parts engineers get together discuss the pros and cons of a rapidly produced automotive parts model and discuss the pros and cons of the design, as they pass it around, twisting and viewing the prototype, and decide if that is what they had in mind. This way, problems get solved up front, before going to the assembly line! Once determined that the automotive prototype design is a go, the model can then be sent to a die maker.

Automotive Prototyping and the Die Maker Process

The die maker cannot use model to make the die, but because they have it in their hand and can look at it and feel it, they can determine where the parting lines will be and exactly how much steel they will need to produce it. The timing of the die process is greatly compressed.

Examples of Automotive Rapid Prototype Parts

· Car Engine parts

· Engine castings and parts

· Auto Body Components

· Auto Mechanical parts

· Car Dashboards

· Car Handles and Knobs

· Car Trim parts

Fail first Paradox in Automotive Rapid Prototyping

The automotive rapid prototyping paradox is to fail earlier rather than later. By failing earlier, the design engineers surprisingly succeed in accelerating the project; this greatly reduces development cost risk. By considering all automotive prototype failures as learning experiments, the engineer has much less stress, knowing that they are practicing the old adage, that success comes from ninety-nine percent failure and introspection.