British animation studio Aardman — the Acad-emy Award-winning operation behind Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run — used an extremely high-accuracy rotary table supplied by Bath-based RPI (www.rpiuk.com) during the creation of its latest release — ‘Early Man’.

The small and lightweight motorised two-axis assembly enabled the attached camera to be suspended over sets and to move between props, which provided better camera angles, including one looking look straight down onto the set.

Dave Roberts, electronics and motion control engineer at Aardman, said: “RPI can design and manufacture highly accurate bespoke pieces of kit, which is key in stop-motion animation.

“Rotary tables have been used in the film industry for a while now; at Aardman, we’ve used them since the beginning.”

As a leader in ‘rotational innovation’, RPI operates in any market requiring high-load rotational accuracy and precision, including aerospace, gas turbines, CMM, calibration and standards labs, universities, optics, scientific research, navigation and guidance systems, encoders, Hirth couplings and precision gears. The company has a world-wide network of distributors.