A company that started and ended MACH on a high was Burlescombe-based XYZ Machine Tools.

In the two months before the exhibition (February and March), the company recorded its best-ever two months for machine orders; and while this may have indicated that customers were pre-empting MACH and getting their orders in early, that was not the case as the exhibition delivered “exceptional levels of sales and enquiries”.

Machine orders for February and March came to over £7.5 million, with £4.5 million taken in February alone. This figure was helped by an open house at XYZ’s Devon headquarters and another three orders for its UMC-5X gantry-style simultaneous five-axis machining centre (www.xyzmachinetools.com).

Managing director Nigel Atherton said: “With these high levels of sales activity preceding MACH, there was some slight concern that the exhibition would be quiet, but that was certainly unfounded.

Our stand was extremely busy from day one; over the week, we took orders for 24 machines — worth more than £1 million. In addition to these firm orders, we also logged 640 enquiries, which will lead to more orders in the coming weeks and months.”

MACH 2018 saw a number of debuts from XYZ, which helped to raise interest.

Among these were Robo-Tend, a robot-based automation cell with vision system suitable for use on machining centres and turning centres; being both modular and mobile, it brings true robot automation within the reach of traditional sub-contract engineering businesses.

XYZ was also showing the HP Multi Jet Fusion 3-D printer for the first time.

This is said to be capable of increasing 3-D printing speeds 10-fold, and it moves the technology into the production environment.

Also attracting much interest were the previously mentioned UMC-5X, which made its MACH debut, plus a number of other machining centres from XYZ’s Linear Rail and centres from XYZ’s Linear Rail and Heavy-Duty ranges.