Dormer Pramet’s new purpose-built Experience Center (www.dormerpramet.com) is a major investment by the company; it is designed to provide expertise, training, research and development to further increase the scope and performance of the company’s wide assortment of cutting tools.

The Experience Center — commonly referred to as the XP Center — is located at Dormer Pramet’s indexable insert production unit at Šumperk, in the Czech Republic.

Stefan Steenstrup, Dormer Pramet president, said: “Šumperk is a very important location for Dormer Pramet — and the ideal place for our XP Center.

“More than 600 of our 1,400 employees are based there, and around 40% of everything we sell is manufactured there.

“That said, the XP Center is very much a global facility and will be a focal point for a number of activities. It will help us to expand our knowledge in order to develop new solutions for our customers.

“We are very focused on certain areas of the market and have a unique position in numerous industry sectors, including railway and heavy machining.

“In order to maintain that position, we need to continue to develop these areas in the future, along with our broad customer offer across all segments.”

The XP Center will be home to Dormer Pramet’s materials team, which is currently researching the properties of substrates, developing new CVD and PVD coatings and improving the implementation of the cutting edge.

The centre also features a laboratory equipped with ‘state of the art’ technology, such as electron microscopes, 3-D scanners and a machine for measuring material wear during repeated stress.