Vacuum news equipment; and Mr R W Reynoldson, FRIMIT, LIM, Manager of the Heattreatment Division at Tipton, discussed modern techniques and equipment for vacuum heat-treatment.
Vacuum Engineering (Scotland) Limited and will supply highly sophisticated alloy scrap suitable for vacuum melting. Mr C C Williams has been appointed to the board with Mr F F Wolff as Chairman, Mr J Gourlay and Mr I M Brackenbury. Mr Williams recently completed a thesis for the Graduate School of Business, University of California, on the use of precious metals in the aerospace industry, and at 25 is the youngest member to be appointed to the board of one of Rudolf Wolff’s group of companies.
New industrial training facilities at SIRA
Conferences and group activities Electronic production eouipment exhibition
The largest exhibition of electronic production equipment so far held in Britain took place at- the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London on 13th-18th November. A total of 46 American firms took part of which 6 were seeking representation in the UK. The exhibition was organized by the US Trade Centre in London. Total output of the British electronics industry exceeded f500,000,000 in 1965 and the current estimate is that by 1970 the figure will have risen to over f750,000,000. This means that a corresponding rise may be expected in the demand for equipment with which to produce the complex circuit boards, minute transistors, diodes and packages which are required to make every electronic device from a pocket transistor radio to a full-scale research computer. In addition to their own production of finished electronic equipment, British firms are ideallv placed for. and activelv interested in, producing components fo; electronic equipment manufacturers in Europe and Scandinavia. Several companies have already negotiated licences to produce and supply components on these lines, using American production equipment. According to a recent survey of the British electronics industry, there is considerable demand for sophisticated production equipment such as spray etches, vertical planetary rotary etching machines, precision etches, screen printers, single spindle drills, wave cleaning modules, positerm soldering guns and crimping tools. In addition, the Americans hope to introduce new types of welding and encapsulating equipment, wire-processing and winding machines and integrated circuit and solid state processing equipment. The choice of the Royal Lancaster Hotel was not inappropriate, since it claims to be one of the most electronically advanced hotels in Britain. Tt is also one of the very few capable of staging a 10,000 sq ft exhibition all on one floor and with all the ancillary services, such as electricity, water and telecommunications, piped in and ready for use. So far as electronic devices are concerned, the hotel boasts that its guests can ‘tour’ an exhibition without ever getting out of bed-the whole area is covered by closed-circuit television which 666
has recently instituted two new schemes to speed the adoption of advar.ces in science and technology, particularly by industry. One scheme is concerned with the induction of graduates and other new entrants to industry. The other, with longer term benefits, operates in the area of technological education at secondary school level. Industrial organisations are frequently faced with the problem of inducting new staff in such a way that they acquire the required industrial and commercial orientation with a minimum of delay at an economic cost. SIRA has just introduced a scheme based on Siraid, the industrial information and advisory service on measurement and control, whereby graduates and other entrants to industry can be quickly and effectively provided with the necessary operational experience in profitable applications of present-day science and technology. Under -this scheme graduate staff are seconded to SlRA for 3 months where, under supervision, they work on the solution of practical problems put to Siraid by buyers or potential buyers of instruments and control equipment. During this period of secondment, staff work on about 40 problems, a substantial number of which involve visits to industrial firms to carry out investigations in situ. SIRA also initiated, during the summer vacation this year, a Schoolmaster Fellowship scheme by which science teachers in local grammar and secondary schools were offered the opportunity to work in the laboratories of SIRA on specific projects, for periods of not less than three weeks, for a small honorarium. The scheme met with a good reception from a number of science masters who were able to undertake specific tasks on projects currently in progress. The experiment was a success on both sides and it is hoped that the insight thus gained by schoolmasters, into at least some aspects of industrial research, will put them in a better position to guide and encourage their pupils who are interested in applied science careers. SIRA
Mr C C Williams
is supplied to every one of the 392 bedrooms. Further, should any guest wish to talk face to face with the president of one of the visiting American companies, he may do so-by videophone, linked direct with the United States via the Early Bird satellite. Even the resulting bill will be handled by the hotel’s own computer. The six firms seeking representation in the UK were: Berg Electronics Inc, New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, manufacturers of machines for the assembly of semiconductor circuits; Conforming Matrix Corporation, Toledo, Ohio, manufacturers of spray coaters and the associated transportation equipment; Plato Products Inc, El Monte, California, specializing in soldering iron tips; Forslund Engineering Co, Oakland, California, manufacturing circuit printers particularly for cermets; Rogan Brothers Inc, Skokie, Illinois, specializing in control knob manufacture; and Simonds Machine Co, Cambridge, Massachusetts, producers of tools for clipping, crimping and soldering wires. Metallurgy symposium
The First International Symposium on Metallurgy and Heat Treatment was held in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland on 24th-27th October. The symposium was organized by the Polish Instytut Mechaniki Precyzyjnej. Contributors included representatives from the main Eastern European countries as well as from Great Britain, Japan, Sweden and the USA. The British contingent included three senior executives of Wild Barfield Limited (a division of Parkinson Cowan Ltd). Dr F W Haywood B SC, FRIC, Technical Director of Wild Barfield, read a paper on modern techniques and equipment for gas carburizing and carbonitriding; Mr F L Gladwin spoke on modern high production high frequency heating
Instrument evaluation
On Friday, 10th November 1967, SIRA held a one-day symposium at the Connaught Rooms, Great Oueen Street London WC2, covering: specification and testing of instrument performance; the importance of environmental testing; the usefulness of evaluation to instrument users; views of manufacturers: and the influence of evaluation on instrument quality. After six years experience of instrument testing SIRA have now made available to industry the performance data for combinations of electrical, mechanical, pneumatic, chemical, and thermal devices found in instrumentation.