Stirring times for Yorkshire Machine Tools' Crawford Swift

It has also set up a special partnership with the institution to provide engineering support and will be able to use the machine for trials and demonstrations. The arrangement involves a Powerstir 320 friction stir welding machine and three-year support package. The machine will be a more powerful version of one supplied to the French Aerospace Research Institute and the little brother of the 132 kW spindle machine currently being installed at The Welding Institute in Sheffield - which is one of the largest in the world and is at 10 mtall, 20 mlong and 14 mwide, larger than the average 5-bedroom detached house. The university's model is a Lab type machine with production capability and a 1,000 mm y-axis travel; 800 mm x-axis travel; 150 mm z-axis travel; and 20 kW spindle. It comes with the Crawford Swift Powerstir data acquisition system and provides continual measurement of the welding parameters. Crawford Swift faced competition from America and the rest of the world. "We are especially pleased to have won this project in the face of such stiff competition and are delighted to be working in partnership with the School of Material Science. It will help to ensure that we stay at the leading edge of this very exciting technology," said Carl Griffiths, technical sales director of the Yokshire Machine Tools Group.