Chief executive Sarah Ramsay and her team took groups of adults and children on a tour of the future, showcasing the firm’s use of state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to create precision industrial-grade parts.
The tour was organised as part of the New Zealand International Science Festival, and participants were introduced to an array of advanced manufacturing devices, including computer numerical control (CNC) machines capable of five-axis high-precision machining and 3-D printers able to create parts out of carbon fibre, copper or onyx.
Mrs Ramsay described some of the highly tooled products the company made, including components for an artificial hand made by TASKA Prosthetics.
The company also supplied components to Queenstown company Shotover, which creates stabilised camera gimbal systems used for filming action sequences in Hollywood films including Top Gun: Maverick and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Mrs Ramsay said she and her husband, co-owner Alex Ramsay, were passionate about showing people how things actually got made, and how investing in advanced systems, including robotic arms to automate repetitive tasks such as checking individual components, enabled their staff to be able to focus on higher value jobs.
"The people that were doing the physical manual checking, they are now able to operate the robot, and they are learning how to program."
One young person enjoying developing his skills at United Machinists is Callum Scott.
An Otago Polytechnic mechanical engineering graduate, he first connected with United Machinists while he was still a student, developing an automation project which aimed to add robotic-loading capabilities to older CNC machines at the factory.
"The idea being that we can have these machines running 24/7 as well," he said.
He progressed to an internship at the company over the summer last year, and he has now been working at the company for about eight months.
Mr Scott said he enjoyed the role because at United Machinists he was able to be both hands-on and use the theory parts of his engineering degree.
Being able to part of designing systems as well as working on machines was "pretty awesome".
