Guide To Suppliers

After two years of the wrong type of headlines, it’s refreshing to hear that many companies are emerging from the pandemic with a real sense of optimism, which, in the case of William Hughes, has been driven by extra capacity and some interesting new capabilities.

William Hughes has come to the aid of a leading automotive tier-one seat manufacturer – a rescue mission that was only made possible by the company’s broad set of skills and advanced capabilities in the world of complex wire forms.

William Hughes has come to the aid of an automotive seat manufacturer, providing a spot-welded grid assembly to complete an under-seat storage unit for a market leading city van.

Choosing a spring from a catalogue may seem like an easy answer, especially if it offers the cheapest option. Not so, argues Emma Burgon, Engineering Director at William Hughes, who maintains that selecting a spring purely on grounds of cost can prove a false economy, especially when production line inefficiencies are taken into consideration.

In the specification of springs and other wire components, secondary processes and finishes can be an important consideration.

William Hughes has increased its component endurance testing capabilities with the acquisition of two new compression spring fatigue testing machines from Italian test equipment specialist Micro Studio.

It’s a dilemma that design engineers face every day: the items they are designing need to comfortably perform the duties expected of them against a background of controlling the cost of manufacture.

Since William Hughes acquired AC Services in the summer of 2015, the company has been busy establishing an 80m² high specification clean room at its Stalbridge, Dorset headquarters.