Mechanical engineering company and joint venture between Rolls-Royce and Unipart Group, MetLase, has joined the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, bringing its world-leading technology to the partnership.
MetLase uses a laser-cutting methodology and press-brake material forming, to design and produce simple and complex tooling, fixturing and components for a wide range of industries, often bringing lead times of months down to just days.
The company applies patented techniques, honed in the demanding aerospace industry, to a vast range of problems across all manufacturing sectors, and all parts of the value chain.
Since being established in 2015, MetLase has doubled in size and is reportedly experiencing rapid growth.
The Sheffield-based company has joined AMRC following a recent collaboration in which it developed a set of 14 fixtures for the assembly of complex parts.
MetLase is expected to work as a partner on the Integrated Manufacturing Group (IMG) at the AMRC’s ‘Factory 2050’ facility, drawing on MetLase’s skills and modular fixturing to develop “smart enabled tooling”.
Steve Dunn, managing director of MetLase, explained: “As partners on the Integrated Manufacturing Group, we can combine our expertise to develop our fixtures to interact with autonomous technologies such as those involved with robotic assembly.”
James Illingworth, IMG theme lead in automated assembly, added: “Developing “smart” fixturing, or fixturing that is intelligent by using sensors to collect data, provides valuable benefits for in-process control and monitoring, and improvements in part quality. The data collected can be used in real-time for process adjustment or later in the manufacturing process for review.”
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