It’s often said that the machine-tool sector acts as a bellwether for the wider economy. If those who make the machines that make things are in rude health, then trading conditions across other industries are likely to be on the up. Or so the argument goes.

If that’s the case, then the recent Mach machine-tool show in Birmingham indicates that we are in for a period of sustained growth. Exhibitor numbers were at an all-time high. Visitor numbers were up by 10% compared with two years previously. There was a real feeling of optimism around the halls. 

One of the exhibitors this year was Warrington’s Croft Filters, a small firm with a 30-year history and an eye on the future. It took a small stand in the new additive layer manufacturing (ALM) section at the exhibition, alongside stalwarts such as Renishaw, which makes 3D printing machines at the former Bosch plant in Miskin, Cardiff. Renishaw was exhibiting in three separate areas for the first time.

On the first day of the show, Croft director Neil Burns admitted he wasn’t sure what the benefit for the business of attendance at Mach would be. The company designs and makes bespoke filtration equipment for a variety of sectors and customers across the world. 

Burns, an entrepreneur who began Croft as a business supplying wire mesh, has always used technology to enhance the firm’s prospects – “the worldwide web was a godsend to us” – and a fascination with 3D printing is the latest example of that. 

He says: “The first time we came across additive layer was plastic 3D printing in Manchester, and I realised that that could be used as a method for putting the holes in filters – and I realised that, if it could be done in plastic, then it could be done in metal. 

“We realised that additive could be used within our filtration-producing capabilities.” The company subsequently invested several hundred thousand pounds in a high-tech ALM machine and is now, unusually, using parts made on it in finished products, albeit at low volumes. 

“It’s been a very, very steep learning curve,” Burns admits. For example, the firm had to add bespoke production system elements to the ALM machine to enable it to produce components in metals. Meanwhile, Burns says that Croft’s customers do not yet comprehend the potential of ALM. “It’s not that they are not comfortable: they don’t know what it is and they don’t know what it can do,” he says. “When you’ve been used to dealing with conventional products that have been around for hundreds of years, then it doesn’t suddenly make sense that the technology can make designs totally different.”

He adds: “While I’m a believer in ALM, it’s certainly not going to take over the mainstream of what we do. I’d say that in 10 years’ time if additive manufacturing was doing 25% of our production then I’d think that’s as good as it can get.”

Across the way in the machine-tool mainstream of Hall 5 at the NEC, Chris Sumner, UK managing director of Fanuc, was enthusing about the latest developments in the company’s automation technology, which are seeing increasing levels of integration between robots, CNC controls, small vertical machining centres, injection moulding machines and spark erosion equipment. At Mach, the company was demonstrating complete cells combining all these technologies, as well as a newer design of robot that could perhaps one day be common on aerospace production lines for fuselage construction. 

Sumner acknowledges that robots were formerly the province of big OEMs in sectors such as automotive but says that they are now within the reach of smaller suppliers. 

He says: “I’ve been in the business a long time and I’ve been marched off a shipyard in Scotland because of trying to introduce a robot. But that’s broken down now, and I think the automotive guys have done a good job with that. I think there is an understanding now of what robot automation can offer. 

“The concern was always, ‘will this replace a person?’.” There is a strong health and safety argument for the introduction of automation in areas that are hazardous for people, he says. 

This is a strong focus for Sick, the British subsidiary of a German firm that specialises in supplying sensors and vision, measurement and machinery safety systems. Sick’s technology, which is produced in Germany and Malaysia, is typically retrofitted to older machine tools. The firm also works closely with machine-tool firms to develop products that complement the OEM’s designs and improve safety and production efficiency. Last year the company turned over more than ¤1 billion in sales for the first time, says Dr Martin Kidman, Sick UK product specialist in machinery safety. 

Kidman says one of the trends in automation is to collect more and more data from sensors and encoders to help improve the production process. “We’re not at the stage of wanting to do this wirelessly because of security issues, particularly when it comes to machine safety,” he says. “With safety you have to very careful about how the information is transmitted and received.” 

The market for machine tools is much more buoyant than three years ago, says David Hannaby, the firm’s product manager for imaging and measurement. “I think the automotive industry has been the most buoyant, and we seem to be generating a lot of business retrofitting and with new projects. We’re also seeing a lot of work in food packaging, and in radio-frequency identification work for airports.”

Fanuc, which makes its robots at a single factory in Japan, produces 5,000 machines a month. Sumner says the company is looking at designs of ‘spider’ robot that hang upside down and could be used for very precise operations such as in electronics manufacture. The aerospace robot shown at Mach is “highly strong and highly accurate, with high degrees of positional accuracy,” he says. “It could do traditionally labour-intensive jobs that require constant accuracy.”

Siemens also had an innovative robot at the show. Developed in partnership with Kuka, it is capable of machining around 180° – something the German giant has never been able to demonstrate before. Business sales manager Andy Hodgson says the technological difficulties associated with using robots as machine tools are formidable. “The difficulty has always been the way the robot deflects,” he says. “If you have a rigid machine tool, when you push, it’s solid enough not to push back. With a robot, if you push that way, it goes another way and it’s got a different deflection, a different angle.” But advances in digital technology now mean that adjustments can be made to compensate for the elbow flexing. 

“That’s what’s never been done before with the speed of digital,” he says. “It could potentially provide a way of overcoming the constraints of the envelopes of machine tools.” Such machines would ultimately be used alongside traditional machine tools and ALM in the factories of the future, he says. 

Hodgson argues that future digital factories will be part of an “industrial revolution 4.0” in which machines evolve to become more efficient. “The idea of a digital factory is that it learns to make itself more efficient; it self-develops, and is self-evolving,” he says. 

More efficient production technology is likely to spur the return of manufacturing work to Britain, he says. “There is a lot of onshoring going on. The delay in getting products made in the Far East and getting them back means you are not responsive enough in the market.”

Sumner of Fanuc mentions a large engine manufacturer that had been taking hardened steel made in Wolverhampton and machining components from it in India that has recently brought the work back to the UK, investing in new machine tools to do so. 

“I know of another firm that was getting boilers made in China because of cost that was having to scrap half of them when they were delivered due to quality issues. That financial benefit is going to be exhausted at some point,” says Sumner. 

Smarter factories

Smarter Factories, the IMechE conference on factories of the future, is to take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Birmingham NEC, on 19 June.

Speakers include:

• Terry Scuoler, chief executive, manufacturers’ organisation
the EEF

• Ben Morgan, head of integrated manufacturing, Sheffield AMRC

• Graham Dewhurst, director-general, Manufacturing Technologies Association

• Dr Helen Meese, head of engineering in society, IMechE

• Dr Emma Rushforth, Warwick Manufacturing Group

• Dr Jagjit Singh Srai, University of Cambridge

• Professor Hongbiao Dong, University of Leicester

• Ray Gibbs, chief executive, Haydale

• Robin Weston, Renishaw Additive Manufacturing Products Division

• Professor Steve Burnage, Lockheed Martin, University
of Surrey

• Professor Stewart Williams, Cranfield University.

For more details go to www.smarterfactories.com