In 2018, MACH moved to its new home in halls 6, 7, 17, 18, 19 and
20. Organiser the MTA has improved signposting, so there’ll be icons
(top of this page and overleaf) in the various zones to help visitors
more easily get their bearings and guide them through the show
engineers a hands-on experience with real
cutting-edge technologies. Airbus Defence
and Space’s Mars rover vehicle Bruno will
also be a feature of the E&D zone. Bruno
will support the 2020 ExoMars mission,
a European Space Agency programme
executed in cooperation with Russian Space
Agency Roscosmos, with contribution from
NASA. The six-wheeled rover will carry
technology developed by other parties and
so will be able to drill down to two metres
to take rock samples that will have been
protected from harsh solar radiation. The
samples will be analysed on board the rover
and the results sent to Earth.
The E&D zone will see Vex Robotics give
students the opportunity to have a hands-on
robotics experience. The company has also
developed teaching resources to support its
educational robots’ use. And on that point,
the zone will have more for teachers this
year, highlighting continuing professional
development (CPD) opportunities related to
manufacturing.
The exhibition includes an even larger
number of trade associations, along with
their members. This year’s MACH edition
will see 10 associations represented:
Aluminium Federation (ALUFED); Association
of Industrial Laser Users (AILU); British
Abrasives Federation (BAF); Cast Metals
Federation (CMF); Confederation of British
Metalforming (CBM), GTMA, Metalforming
Machinery Makers’ Association (MMMA)
and Processing and Packaging Machinery
Association (PPMA), which also takes in
the British Automation & Robot Association
(BARA) and the UK Industrial Vision
Association (UKIVA); and, nally, UK
Lubricants Association (UKLA). Some of
these have their own areas, such as GTMA’s
pavilion and MMMA’s 650 m2 village.
For MACH 2020, organiser the MTA
has also brought in some of the UK’s
EXHIBITION PREVIEW SETTING THE SCENE
High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult
centres – Shef eld University’s Advanced
Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC),
the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC)
and Strathclyde University’s Advanced
Forming Research Centre (AFRC). “It’s
the rst year that we have had that many
Catapult centres in the room,” Fudge
emphasised. The AMRC last time put on a
show that highlighted how sensors could be
retro tted to existing equipment – “one of
the busiest stands at the show” – and this
year’s MACH will build on that. The MTC will
be highlighting its DRAMA project (Digital
Recon gurable Additive Manufacturing
facilities for Aerospace), a £15 million
MTC-led project that encourages suppliers
to the UK aerospace industry to adopt
AM. Supported by £11 million from BEIS’s
Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, DRAMA
has already engaged with more than 50
aerospace supply chain companies and is
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