About Us

Express Engineering’s managing director, Nigel Davison, elaborates: “In the medium to long term, we expect that our planned increase in business will largely depend on our ability to manufacture large complex parts from difficult to machine materials and in our capacity to strengthening our position in industry specific supply chains – such as oil and gas, renewable energy and aerospace. To realise these company objectives and help maintain our current competitive advantage, we have recently made a number of significant changes to our business.”

He continues: “Having previously been operating at full capacity, the first phase of our expansion programme – an 18,000ft² factory extension – means that we now have room to grow. To ensure the quality of the output from our large capacity horizontal machining centre, having examined the alternatives, we purchased a Hexagon, Romer Sigma Measuring Arm and Aberlink 3D software.

“Mindful of the size of the components to be measured, and their demanding tolerances, we consulted Northern Metrology and owner Tony Smith suggested employing a combination of two complementary technologies – 2.5m Romer Sigma Measuring Arm, linked to Aberlink 3D measuring software. Now fully employed, the new combination is proving both easy to use and able to meet our stringent geometric part accuracy specifications".

To enable the company’s ambitious objectives to be realised, Q-Mass recruited a strong team of people whose array of abilities encompassed all of the required technical skills. The company also invested in a variety of state-of the-art machine tools. The early success of Q-Mass proved the founding principles of the company to be correct. Further continuous investment has resulted in Q-Mass becoming regarded as one of the most capable UK machine shops serving the Oil and Gas industry.

Now operating from a modern 30,000 square feet manufacturing plant in Central Scotland, much of Q-Mass's work is related to new product development, where the technology required by the oil industry means increasingly complex designs need to be manufactured. These intricate parts, including gun drilling and hydraulic ports, frequently include complex geometries, tight tolerances, and are often characterised by challenging lead times.

To ensure the highest standards of components being delivered to its customers, in addition to thorough 'in process' inspection procedures being carried out, painstaking final inspection routines are undertaken on all of Q-Mass’s output. Prompted by the growing complexity of Q-Mass’s output and the increasing size of components manufactured by the company, a recent search for a large volume Coordinate Measuring Machine was undertaken.

Company owner, Ronnie Robertson explained. “It is no coincidence that the ‘Q’ of Q-Mass stands for ‘Quality’. Having set-out to found our company ethos on the quality of the work we undertake, we have now firmly established our reputation through the high standards of our output".

“To enable the precise measurement of our ever more complex parts and to allow the inspection of our increasingly larger components, we recently carried out a search for a large capacity Coordinate Measuring Machine. After considering the alternative machines, we purchased a Zenith Too CNC CMM from Northern Metrology. Following training on the new Aberlink CMM, our inspectors have been able to master the machine’s relatively simple controls and Aberlink’s intuitive measuring software".

In addition to our new CMM’s generous XYZ measuring envelope of 40" x 60" x 32", that is able to accommodate our larger parts, the Zenith Too’s ease of use and comprehensive capability ensures that even our most demanding of parts can be inspected with high levels of accuracy.