Measuring facility will help provide Northamptonshire firms '˜leg up' in engineering industry

A state-of-the-art new measuring facility at Silverstone's Innovation Centre has been officially opened.
Roz Bird and John Drover at Silverstone Parks Innovation Centre which will house Hexagon metrology facility.Roz Bird and John Drover at Silverstone Parks Innovation Centre which will house Hexagon metrology facility.
Roz Bird and John Drover at Silverstone Parks Innovation Centre which will house Hexagon metrology facility.

The doors of Hexagon’s new metrology inspection centre to serve the expanding cluster of firms based by the Northamptonshire racing circuit were opened by Daventry MP Chris Heaton-Harris and managing director of Hexagon Brett Green.

The 3,000 sq ft facility has been installed with around £750,000 of measurement equipment, crucial for the high performance engineering sector.

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The new centre will allow small and medium sized firms in the aerospace, motorsport and medical industries, among others, to access super accurate measuring devices, which would usually cost thousands to buy in-house.

Launching the new centre, Chris Heaton-Harris, said: “What we have here is going to be world beating.”

And Roz Bird, commercial director at Silverstone Park, said: “It is to allow a leg up to the companies that don’t necessarily have the access to this kind of equipment.”

Hexagon’s Regional Sales Manager, John Drover added that Silverstone was the “perfect location” for the facility of this type.

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He said: “We are sure it will prove extremely popular with SMEs and start-ups which don’t have the finances to invest in equipment like this.”

“The degree of accuracy to which our systems measure these days is mind-boggling - we are talking a sub-micron (ten millionth of a metre) - and for any company to come away from this facility with a measurement report to say their product has passed the inspection means that they have the right credibility and peace of mind when taking their prototype to market.”