The magic of manufacturing

Colin Granger, Machinery Market’s editor, takes up the story . . .

I first met Sam at the Brands Hatch race circuit in August this year, while on my annual ‘pilgrimage’ with daughter and grandson to watch the various practice and qualifying sessions at the British Superbikes event

While wandering around the paddock early in the afternoon of the first day, I struck up conversation with Phil Burman, who was working on a 125 GP bike with the name Sam Burman on the fairing. Although Phil was busy with his preparations, he was keen to point out the many modifications that he and Sam had made to the bike — and the parts that Sam had made, mainly for projects as an apprentice at the local technical college and in their small workshop at home. “She is particularly pleased with the fork yokes; they’re quite a work of art,” said Phil.

I interrupted Phil to make sure I had heard him correctly. I had assumed — quite reasonably, I thought, with the all the talk of motorcycle racing and working in a machine shop at Scunthorpe steelworks — that Sam was Phil’s son. I was assured that Sam was his daughter, and I was invited to come back later for a chat with them both.

At the end of the day’s practice and qualifying sessions, I sought out the Phil Burman Racing van from among the vast number of similar vans, lorries, awnings and motor-homes packed tightly into the paddock. Just a few minutes of conversation with Phil and Sam left me immensely impressed with their passion for racing, and the way they use their engineering ability and ingenuity to work around problems rather than throw money at them.

“When you’re racing on a shoestring, you have to be inventive,” said Sam. She also gave me a brief insight into her work at the steelworks, where she is a fully qualified machinist and uses a variety of machines — ranging from CNC machining centres and massive horizontal borers to large lathes (the largest in the shop is a DSG with a 6ft chuck).

When I unintentionally made a slightly chauvinist remark along the lines that it is not often that one sees a woman achieving success in the male-dominated worlds of racing and machining, Sam said — in a very matter-of-fact manner — that she does not race to do well as a woman but to win a British Championship.

“I do not simply want to be the fastest female, I want to be the fastest racer.” As for work, Sam says she chose her career because she loves making things (she did a four-year apprenticeship at the steelworks, gained an HNC and has been working full time in the machine shop for two years). Sam says she is a racer and a machinist, simple as that. Her gender does not enter the equation.

Early start
So, what were the circumstances that brought 22-year-old Sam to where she is today? “I was born into the world of motorcycle racing and attended my first race when I was just a few weeks old. The Burman family started racing in 1977, and Dad had his first win at Cadwell Park in 1978, riding a 125cc BSA Bantam.

He achieved great success at club level, winning many club championships — culminating in a British Championship in 1991. During the racing season, he raced every weekend that he could afford, and all his spare time was spent in the workshop fixing and making things. That’s the environment I grew up in — helping Dad build engines, repair crash damage and improve all aspects of the bike ourselves with a minimum of financial input.”

Phil recalls that he had an old suitcase full of nuts and bolts and that, at the age of two, Sam would sit for hours matching them up and screwing them together. He also recalls when he stripped the clutch on his 250cc V-twin two-stroke Aprilia; he went to the bench for another tool and returned a few moments later to see Sam (then just four years old) assembling the clutch plates into the clutch basket — in the right order. The only machinery they had was a Myford lathe and an old bench-mounted milling machine; both had been given to Sam by an old man in the village who used to make model steam engines.

Sam was never encouraged to race motorcycles — nor discouraged from doing so. She had friends who rode horses and could easily have joined them, but she wanted to race bikes. Her racing debut was on her sixth birthday, riding a 50cc motocross bike, and she was fiercely competitive from the outset. This competitiveness was evident in everything she did, even skateboarding.

Phil remembers Sam asking him how she could make her skateboard faster. “Make it lighter, take the seals out of the bearings and oil them, then spin them till they are nearly worn out because that’s when a bearing is fastest.” Which is exactly what she did, modifying the bearings accordingly and drilling holes in the board to reduce its weight.

When the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 put a halt to Sam’s off-road racing, she took to racing track-based Mini Motos, moving up to a 125cc GP bike in 2004 when she was 14 — at the same time that her father retired from racing. She went to as many different tracks as possible to gain experience and had her first win in 2005 at Cadwell Park —the circuit where her father had his first win 27 years earlier. After racing and winning at club level, Sam moved up to race in the British 125 GP Championship for the 2011 season.


Education and work
Although racing, building and repairing her motorcycles has dominated her life from a very early age, Sam has never let this affect her education. In fact, while at ‘junior’ school she had private lessons to help her overcome dyslexia, so that she would be fully prepared for secondary education.

During her GCSE years, she worked on a farm — fruit picking and painting — to earn money for racing. “I knew I had to work to have what I wanted; you can’t expect something for nothing.”

Sam left her comprehensive school at 16 with good grades in all subjects and two aims — to develop her racing career and earn money to help her do this. “I had spent masses of time with Dad in our ‘shed’ and really enjoyed making bits and pieces for our bikes, so it seemed a good idea when he suggested that I could make things to earn a living. I also wanted a trade so that I could have a career path and better myself.

“An apprenticeship seemed the ideal solution, as it offered career development and would allow me to earn money from the outset — essential for my racing. I went to an ‘open night’ at the local steelworks and subsequently applied for a place as an apprentice, training to be a machinist.”

After a successful interview procedure that included an aptitude test, Sam gained her place as an apprentice machinist — one of only five taken on that year out of more than a hundred applicants.

Sam’s first year was spent at college; over the following three years, she attended college on a day-release basis, during which time she gained an NVQ level 3 in precision machining and an ONC in mechanical engineering. She followed that with an HNC in the same subject, and for the past two years has been working full time as a machinist in the steelworks’ central engineering workshop.

She used to work the night shift (all apprentice machinists have to do this as part of their apprenticeship), but the hours interfered with her racing; she now works a double day shift, 6am-2pm and 2pm-10pm — one week of each shift, changed on a Wednesday.

Little and large
Most of her time is spent working on an ‘elderly’ Wadkin CNC milling machine with a 1,000 x 500mm bed and a Heidenhain control that requires G-code programming (this is one of the smallest machines in the workshop), although she has to use a wide variety of machines — both manual and CNC — including massive horizontal borers that need the shop’s 30-tonne crane to load parts for machining.

Most of the parts Sam machines are one-offs or small batches; they include castings, fabrications, profiled plate and ‘bright material’. She particularly enjoys machining fabrications, as these require the most ‘setting up’ and can be particularly challenging. That said, some of the CNC machines have a part-probing facility that simplifies the setting procedures.

“Generally, my work colleagues are older than me — most of them are at least twice my age — although there are also a number of former apprentices like myself. Now that I have proved I can do the job, I have been accepted — and they no longer apologise for swearing in front of me. They know it is the job I chose to do and that I don’t expect to be treated any differently.

“As for the future, I want to continue to race motorbikes and win a British Championship; and while I enjoy my job and love machining, I would like to progress to a high-tech environment making prototype and low-volume parts. My dream is to eventually have my own business making parts for the motor-sport industry; I would also like to have my own family someday.

“However, for me racing rules and always will, but I am confident that somehow the rest will fit in around it. Now, we have a busy winter ahead of us preparing for next season, modifying the bike and lightening it even more. As Dad says, less weight is the equivalent of more horsepower.”