Mark has already visited several CGTech customers along with more experience CGTech staff. At one end of the engineering scale a trip to Babcock Rosyth, home to one of the largest waterside manufacturing and repair facilities in the UK, provided an eye-opener with the scale of the large machine tools being used. At the other end of the precision spectrum was a visit to two of the UK’s Formula One teams, Mercedes-AMG and Williams Grand Prix Engineering.
Based in Brechin, Scotland, Mark Watson will provide day-to-day technical support for VERICUT users operating in a diverse range of manufacturing industry sectors. Here, his previous engineering experience will be invaluable. As a time-served apprentice qualified to SVQ Level III in CNC Machining he has hands-on experience of some of the most difficult machining challenges faced by workshops across the country.
“During my apprenticeship I worked for Brechin-based Kelman Engineering producing, amongst other parts, rolling stock wheelsets or ‘bogies’ for railway vehicles,” recalls Mark. “From here I moved to Kestrel Engineering, a subcontract engineering business based in the North of Aberdeen, specialising in oilfield equipment.”
As a newly qualified CNC programmer he started off with simple parts, but this progressed with experience as he gained both machining skills and CAD/CAM knowledge programming part models in Inventor and creating CAM programs using Vero EdgeCAM.
Mark continues: “The role became end-to-end from programming the parts, setting up and proving the jobs out, running the machine and self-inspecting to ensure the specified tolerances and finishes were being achieved.”
As a subcontract workshop Kestrel Engineering produces a wide variety of components for several industry sectors. However, oilfield equipment mostly consisting of downhole tools, such as tubulars, wellbore clean-up tools, valves and crane fabrications as well as R&D work. “Materials ranged from straightforward, free cutting aluminium to 4140 high tensile steel for aggressive gaseous environments, Super Duplex stainless steel, Inconel 718 as well as Hardox 600 for a non-oilfield application. The latter being extremely challenging at around 57 HRc,” Mark says.
Mark was also responsible for all cutting tools across the prismatic machining side of the business in both metric and imperial to suit the various customer requirements. All of this experience and being part of a small team that had to address the complex challenges that customers from various industries would approach the business with, have added to his skill-set.
He concludes: “This is a great challenge for me, the software is very powerful and performs its goals exceptionally well, and I look forward to providing worthy support for existing and new VERICUT users in every industry sector.”
Note to Editors
About CGTech
CGTech’s VERICUT® software is the standard for CNC simulation, verification, optimisation, analysis, and additive manufacturing. CGTech also offers programming and simulation software for composites automated fiber-placement, tape-laying, and drilling/fastening CNC machines. VERICUT software is used by companies of different sizes in all industries. Established in 1988, and headquartered in Irvine, California; CGTech has an extensive network of offices and resellers throughout the world. For more information, visit the CGTech website at www.cgtech.co.uk, call +44 (0)1273 773538, or email info.uk@cgtech.com.
Images and Captions
(MW1.jpg) Bring a variety of industrial experience to the role, Mark Watson joins CGTech’s VERICUT Technical Support Team