Made in England: Air Bearings

It's usually stated that British engineers make the innovations, however different nations exploit them. The historical past of the expertise is filled with tales about British improvements which have led to billions within the US, Japan, China and India. Westwind Air Bearings Ltd isn't a billionaire firm, however it's a mid-sized firm that has used a British invention and has dominated its area of interest marketplace for the previous fifty years, having twice received the Queen's Award for Trade for Innovation the export efficiency.

From 1959, the College of Southampton investigated basic research on the usage of gases as a lubricant for bearings in high-speed and low-friction functions. The Manhattan Mission used fuel bearings in ultrahigh-speed centrifuges to counterpoint uranium for the primary atomic bombs. Nevertheless, the technical data remained secret. The work carried out in Southampton and on the Nationwide Engineering Laboratory (NEL) in East Kilbride, Scotland made the expertise out there to the civil business.

Westwind Generators Ltd was based in 1963 in Poole, Dorset, to research the industrial utility of the findings from the Southampton analysis program. The primary mass-produced product was a high-speed drill, which gained in reputation as a result of it was a lot quieter than the earlier ball-bearing drills. The contract with the Dental Turbine was bought to the Dental Manufacturing Firm in Blackpool and the seek for industrial functions for air bearings started. The primary was in precision grinding machines, and Westwind produced wheel heads for Jones and Shipman machines for a number of years, whereas the Churchill Machine Device Firm used air bearings developed at NEL.

Westwind endeavored to persuade industrial customers that the air bearings had been sturdy sufficient for on a regular basis workshop use. Quite a lot of scientific functions have been efficiently achieved: turbine fuel flowmeters, laser prism spinners, an infrared scanner for pores and skin most cancers detection and excessive precision roundness meters, however a big scale industrial utility has been harder to search out.

The breakthrough got here in 1965 when IBM wanted a high-speed micro-spindle for the manufacturing of its 360-mainframe pc. Westwind adjusted its inside grinding spindle to 120,000 rpm with a quick-release tongs to carry a cemented carbide bur and exams have proven that clear, burr-free bores may be produced within the required quantity and velocity of manufacturing than one minute on a 24-spindle machine ,

Westwind now had a mass marketplace for an air bearing product, however the spindles initially powered by air generators elevated the demand for compressed air within the plant and had been costly to function. Excessive-speed electrical induction motors had been nonetheless of their infancy. Westwind, nonetheless, succeeded in changing their drilling and grinding spindles to electrical drive. In 1971, Westwind acquired the primary Queen's Award for Trade for Innovation. At the moment, it had been acquired by the Federal Mogul Firm of Detroit, Michigan, and shortly after, the identify was modified to Westwind Air Bearings Ltd

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With the arrival of PCs within the 1970's, the marketplace for excessive velocity micro drill spindles expanded quickly. On the finish of the last decade, Westwind received the Queen's Award for Trade for export efficiency. Different corporations entered the market in England and Japan, however Westwind retained its main place. Federal Mogul had given up its European actions within the 1980s and Westwind was purchased by a gaggle of senior executives who bought the corporate to the Flight Refueling Firm just a few years later. Presently, Westwind employed round 300 folks in two factories.

Within the new millennium, Westwind closed a manufacturing facility within the UK and relocated a part of its manufacturing to China. It accounts for 70 % of the worldwide marketplace for industrial air bearings. It's now owned by the GSI Group, registered in New Brunswick, Canada, and has workplaces within the US, Europe, Japan and China. His declare to nonetheless be a British firm might be referred to as into query if not all engineering designs and developments are accomplished by British engineers in Poole. In Could 2015, Westwind Air Bearings Ltd once more received the Queen's Trade Innovation Award.