The Open Day, held at the company’s world-class Innovation Centre in Gloucestershire, UK, featured a presentation from Renishaw, alongside talks from Airbus, GKN, Rolls-Royce, Castle Precision Engineering and Sandvik Coromant.The event led discussions on the future of aerospace and what preparations manufacturers should make to meet the expectations of this growing industry. The 150 attendees were a mix of tier 1 and 2 suppliers, including manufacturing professionals, company directors and shop-floor engineers.
Trevor Higgs, Vice President and Head of Engineering, Airbus UK gave the Keynote address to provide insight into Airbus’ views on the future of flight. His presentation also focused on the industry’s reliance on manual work and how automation and digitalisation still have a long way to go to make a difference to aerospace.
Paul Perera, Vice President of Technology at GKN, Simon Gough-Rundle, Civil Aerospace Chief Metrologist at Rolls Royce, Yan Tiefenbrun, Managing Director at Castle Precision Engineering and Magnus Ekbäck, Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at Sandvik Coromant, also presented at the Open Day.
“Aerospace is the one of the biggest manufacturing industries in the UK and there are so many opportunities for growth and development,” said Adrian Billingsley, Marketing Coordinator at Renishaw. “Bringing these leading figures of aerospace together, with other like-minded professionals, gave real insights to the industry and opened up the discussion on how we should shape future development.”
“Renishaw has pioneered a new generation of aerospace technologies in additive manufacturing and metrology,” explained Paul Maxted, Director of Industrial Metrology Applications at Renishaw, who also presented at the event. “This technology enables aerospace businesses to manufacture a new generation of bespoke, lightweight and highly accurate parts. Renishaw’s approach to process control has been instrumental in developing innovative technology and the event provided a great environment to share knowledge with the rest of the industry.”
In addition to talks from industry leaders, attendees were given full demonstrations of a range of Renishaw’s products. These included Renishaw additive manufacturing systems, machine calibration equipment, machine tool probes and the latest technology for co-ordinate measuring machines (CMMs).
Renishaw’s experience in the aerospace sector spans over 40 years, beginning when Sir David McMurtry invented the touch-trigger probe to solve a measurement challenge for Concorde’s engines. The company is dedicated to research and development (R&D), investing up to 18 per cent of annual sales back into R&D, often driven by the demands of the aerospace sector.
