The aerospace specialist
Airframe Designs, which is working in partnership with
Blackpool and Fylde College to ensure its manufacturing engineering programme is relevant to meet the demands of today’s industry requirements, has been awarded Platinum Partner status for its work in helping to shape the college’s current BEng (Hons) Manufacturing Engineering programme. The initiative has also helped Airframe Designs recruit apprentices for its own design, stress, and manufacturing teams, with five apprentices currently working for the company.
Chris Fleet, Airframe Designs’ design manager, said: “Nurturing talent is one of our core values, and our partnership with the college enables us to help young people learn the most relevant skills for today’s marketplace. We have recently taken on two apprentices ourselves from the BTEC course and then worked with them on the degree course to further their skills development.”
The partnership between Airframe Designs and the college has also resulted in the introduction of a ‘craft appreciation course’. This complements the degree course and helps young apprentice designers when designing detailed engineering parts and assemblies.
Michael Smith, Blackpool and Fylde College’s commercial training manager, said: “I would like to thank the Airframe Designs team for their continued support and engagement with us. They have added real-life scenarios and skills into our course, additions that are invaluable for our students; and with polymer additive manufacturing (AM) technology, along with 3-D scanning and 3-D modelling, Airframe Designs offers solutions to complex engineering problems in the aviation and defence part market.”
Recent projects undertaken by Airframe Designs include the design and manufacture of several 3-D printed tooling fixtures for the installation of external sensors onto the fuselage of a special-mission military aircraft, also the integration of new systems into heavy lift drone platforms.