February at Ceramic Substrates

We are pleased to say that Victor  our new highly skilled CNC Programmer who joined the team last month is settling in well to his role within the CNC division, getting to grips with our machinable ceramics and their characteristics.  Tom our trainee started attending the Isle of Wight College one afternoon a week, his time there is spent in the workshop, programming and machining, including manual work.

Another area that we specialise in is High Pressure Components and we have been extremely busy this month manufacturing various Piston Cylinder Assemblies for high temperature / pressure experimental processes.  This is an area that  Ceramic Substrates have specialised in for over 40 years.  We became involved because of our vast experience with Pyrophyllite dating back to the 1930’s.

Our piston-cylinder apparatus is predominately used in Geosciences and Material Sciences, for generating simultaneously high pressures  and temperature.   The principle of the instrument is to generate pressure by compressing a sample assembly.

S & D Extraction have been on site this month to carry out our L.E.V Tests. L.E.V stands for Local Exhaust Ventilation, whereby the machines  extract air from processes as a way of controlling and reducing the exposure of workers to dust.  It is a legal requirement, as set out in COSH Regulations, for any employer to maintain working conditions for employees. Any employer that uses LEV techniques in the workplace must have equipment examined and tested at least “every 14 months” to ensure it is working effectively and safely.  The test itself involves a thorough examination of equipment including hoods, filters and ducts, measurement of the technical performance using the appropriate equipment and assessment of the effectiveness of the LEV system.   We are happy to report that our L.E.V Tests were successful  and showed that our systems are all in good working order.

We attended theSouthern Manufacturing & Electronics Exhibition in Farnborough this month to catch up with a couple of our Suppliers, Trevor from Mitutoyo and Jon from  Hurco and to have discussions with a couple of perspective Suppliers of Tooling.  As you can imagine there are many types of machining tools we use and they may be used alone or in conjunction with other tools at various steps of our manufacturing process, for example; boring, cutting, drilling, grinding, milling and turning tools.