Anilam reaches 40 and invests for the future

US-headquartered but part of the Heidenhain group of companies, Anilam is currently engaged in a $5 million dollar investment programme to create an additional 20,000 ft² of manufacturing area (to add to the existing 113,000 ft² facility). The new area will house the company’s expanded machine shop, which is being upgraded and relocated to provide the additional manufacturing space adjacent to existing cleanrooms and assembly area. The new machine shop will provide floor loadings suitable for heavy machining and environmental control for high precision machining and inspection. “Such an investment – to ensure the Anilam product is manufactured in the most cost-effective and efficient way - really does demonstrate the company’s continued confidence in the world market, where the brand steadfastly retains its presence among both original equipment manufacturers and, importantly, end users, too,” said Phil Goulding, manager of retrofit products & marketing based at ACI (UK), Newport Pagnell. “The investment also coincides with the ongoing development of yet another new CNC system due for launch later this year,” he revealed. Anilam’s history in brief: [] 1968 - launch of Endless Tape encoder, the first affordable DRO technology based on TTL technology; [] 1971 - introduction of linear encoder; [] 1976 - new MDI-200 NC control - the first Wizard microprocessor-based programmable DRO; [] 1977 - Commando point-to-point control - the first microprocessor-based CNC; [] 1979 - launch of contaminant-protected linear encoders; [] 1979 - Super Wizard DRO - the first DRO with external magnetic tape drive; [] 1979 - Crusader - the first conversational programmable CNC; [] 1979 - first 3-axis retrofit kit for knee mills; [] 1984 - introduction of Crusader M control (two-processor design); [] 1986 - Crusader G control - first G-coded control for up to five axes and spindle; [] 1990 - introduction of PC-based CNC technology; [] 1993 - the new Wizard - the first DRO with VFD/feed rate message display; [] 1995 - first to offer roller bearing guided linear encoders for retrofit; [] 1997 – PC-DSP dual processor design; [] 1999 – ‘Smart’ technology features - such as the EverTrack absolute reference system – added to linear encoder scale technology; [] 1999 – launch of up to 5-axis 5000 Series CNC combining PC-based conversational programming with high-speed digital signal processing; [] 2001- launch of 6000 Series multi-axis CNC for vertical machining centres; [] 2006 – the first company to commercially introduce the LCD readout.