FASTENER MAKER WINS MACH FERRARI DRIVE

Jeremy Hornby, managing director of Vaughan Jones Socket Screws went to MACH 2008 seeking new ideas to improve productivity at his Wetherby based specialist fastener business and won himself a week’s drive in the latest Ferrari 360 Spider sports car.

To win the week behind the wheel of the blood red, topless sports car, visitors to MACH 2008 at the NEC in Birmingham in April had to visit the stands of the three joint sponsor companies Citizen Machinery UK, Floyd Automatic Tooling and Miyano Machinery UK that were all launching new products at the show. On each stand they had a passport stamped which was put into a draw at the end of the show.

Said Mr Hornby: “I never expected to win, so I was a bit shocked. I am now planning to head north for a few days posing with my wife and the wind in our hair before spending the nights at a couple of hotels. The only downside is I have nowhere to put my golf clubs!”

Vaughan Jones Socket Screws is a specialist manufacturer of high quality fastenings made from up to 50 mm bar size mainly in stainless steel and exotic alloy steels for aerospace, telecoms, machine tool, medical, autosport, defence and railway sectors. Most customers are UK based with some 10 per cent exported.

The company employs 20 people running a two-shift system and over the last seven years has progressed from using traditional mechanical cam autos to five CNC sliding head lathes.

Set up in 1961 in Scotland, the company moved to its 13,000 ft2 premises in Wetherby in 1972 and only machines its own products in batch sizes that range from just one to 50,000 parts. Thread sizes vary between 10BA, No 0 or M1.4 to M30.

He was presented with a radio controlled version of the car he will be driving, by sponsors David Whitworth area sales engineer for Citizen Machinery, Eric Chamberlain, director of Floyd Automatic Tooling and John Stretton, general manager of Miyano Machinery UK. Mr Hornby said: “My son has already staked his claim on this model and I’m sure he will be significantly less nervous than me piloting the real thing around the countryside.”