The ‘Profitable growth through applied research for Scotland’s manufacturing sector’ event on December 7 – at the multi-million pound research centre in Inchinnan next to Glasgow International Airport, will focus on the latest forging, machining and assembly/automation and manufacturing techniques and technologies.

It will be the first event of its kind demonstrating to Scotland-based organisations how they can achieve overall gains in manufacturing efficiencies and thus be better able to compete in the global aerospace, oil and gas, and automotive markets.

The AFRC is one of the UK Government’s seven elite High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult centres, the only one in Scotland. It is a globally recognised centre of excellence in metal forming research, manufacturing technologies and innovation. It has the in-house capability to heat, shape, finish, measure, test and analyse metal parts and components via forging and forming, micro and nano manufacturing, as well as precision engineering regimes, plus robotics and manufacturing automation. It also maintains a range of rapid prototyping/additive layer equipment, CAD, modelling and simulation tools.

AFRC executive chairman, Professor Keith Ridgway CBE, will be the keynote speaker at the event and will reinforce how world-class machining opportunities can be exploited by Scotland’s manufacturing base.

Working in support of Catapult Centres nationally, Sandvik will also be presenting the success of applied machining research and development to create innovations for the world's automotive, aerospace and energy industries.

Starrag UK will be playing a key role by illustrating its manufacturing engineering qualities and technologies in a number of relevant industry sectors:

• Aerostructures – the Starrag STC 800X machining centre for the high-speed machining of aluminium, enabling users to achieve a step change in machining performance – and profitability – for the production of aluminium aerostructure components.


• Aero assembly – the Droop & Rein FOGS high- speed, high-accuracy machining/milling of metal and carbon fibre components, including sub-assemblies.


• Automotive – Heckert HEC automated solutions – demonstrating how high-end machining and automation can reduce costs.


• Oil and gas - Scharmann Ecoforce single platform horizontal automated machining of next generation ‘larger’ valve blocks; plus 24/7 manufacturing of high-value products.