Airframe Designs inspires budding engineers
Above: Three of the apprentices at Airframe Designs (left to right), Bailey Black, Louis Prescott and James Hodgkiss.
Courtesy Airframe Designs
The company has been awarded Platinum Partner status by Blackpool and Fylde College for its work in helping to shape its 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 working for the company currently.
Chris Fleet, design manager at Airframe Designs, 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 demanding marketplace.
“We have recently taken 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 that complements the degree course and helps young apprentice designers when designing detailed engineering parts and assemblies.
The course at the college covers core engineering principles including manufacturing processes, management, sustainability and business improvement techniques with specific application to today’s engineering sectors.
Manufacturing Engineering students on the course have access to industry-leading engineering and software simulation facilities. Degree apprentices also look at the complexities of business including safety and how to support environmental and future operational changes to benefit the industry.
Michael Smith, Commercial Training Manager Blackpool and Fylde College, said: “I’d 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 which are invaluable for our students.”
With polymer additive manufacturing technology, combined with 3D scanning and 3D modelling, Airframe Designs offers creative solutions to complex engineering problems in the aviation and defence part market, including solutions for airframe tooling. This technology can also be adapted for other industries including space, nuclear, motorsport and rail.
Recent projects undertaken by Airframe Designs include the design and manufacture of several 3D printed tooling fixtures to aid the installation of external sensors onto the fuselage of a special mission military aircraft and the integration of new systems into heavy lift drone platforms.
The company has also been responsible for the conceptual design at a platform level for new uncrewed air-systems, test rig and tooling for electric vehicle propulsion systems and most recently the design and analysis of operator consoles for a special mission aircraft.
