Getting the measure of it - A small UK company with a long history but a low profile is a top-three company worldwide in the machine tool field. But it has other markets in its sights as well

摘要

A low-profile company, Leicester-based Newall Measurement Systems is one of the top three companies of its type in the world, ranking alongside Heidenhain and Fagor (if China is excluded) in encoder/DRO manufacture. The 70-employee company (plus 14 in the US) makes in excess of 50,000 products in a year, the vast majority being exported. Indeed, the firm won a Queen's Award for Export in 1998. With a history that stretches back to 1968 (see box, page 82), the company pioneered the then unique Spherosyn measurement technology in 1973 - a system based on the use of plated nickel-chrome elements inside a stainless steel tube and the varying inductance this arrangement creates which can be measured and converted to length.