We would like to acknowledge the following suppliers and other people who have helped us to bring this project to market:
Ufone Engineering- Dudley – who CNC turned all the large base components in P20 steel. Thank you very much to Dave and Gary, which reminds me I need to send a sample of the product to them to see. http://www.ufone-eng.com/
AW Jigboring in Redditch who bored the pillar and bush holes for the base- both the cone and the base. Barry FitzGerald was helpful and delivered on time. http://www.awjigboring.com/
AMEDM Smethwick- Richard Madeley. They have a wire erosion capacity to 500mm thickness- which was critical in wire eroding the top section inserts for the post. These were wire eroded as a pair, and then honed to give the gloss finish you see. The insert for the slot was also wired out by AMEDM. They also provided the spiral plunge edm- using a their C-axis machines- for the connecting pin within the Tigrox mechanism. http://www.amedm.co.uk/
The electrodes for this spiral sparking were made by local company VES Precision- Tom Newbery using a CNC machining centre fitted with a 4th axis. http://www.ves-precision.com/
Thank you to Peter at Enterprise Honing http://www.enterprise-honing.co.uk/in Gloucester who honed the outside sections of the post giving us an excellent finish on the Wire eroded bore- at a fraction of the price and much better roundness than can be achieved by conventional polishing.