Ricardo — the strategic engineering and environmental consultancy that specialises in the transport, energy and scarce-resources sectors and has its headquarters in West Sussex — has spent a further £1.5 million on ‘state of the art’ spiral-bevel-grinding capability from Klingelnberg, building on the investment in advanced gear-manufacturing machine tools that was announced earlier in the year.
This latest round of investment also includes a number of additional machines to provide further machining capacity, as well as new design and quality assurance capabilities through software upgrades.
These include the KIMOS (Klingelnberg Integrated Manufacturing of Spiral Bevel Gears) package from Oerlikon.
Together, these investments in manufacturing technology and software will improve Ricardo’s ability to design, analyse, manufacture and inspect bevel gears with a closed-loop system, allowing it to “deliver optimised customer solutions with outstanding precision and quality.
“The benefits of this new technology will positively affect nearly every aspect of Ricardo’s manufacturing work for motor-sport clients ranging from WRC to LMP and GT, ultimately resulting in even higher standards of product quality and shorter lead times.”
Mark Barge, managing director of Ricardo Performance Products, said: “I am pleased that we can announce these investments in upgrading our manufacturing capabilities and software.
“Collectively, they underscore our strategy of equipping ourselves with the skills, advanced manufacturing technology and expertise to deliver outstanding customer-specific solutions in minimal lead time, and they further help to position Ricardo at the leading edge of the highly demanding motor-sports driveline sector.”