Instrumental solutions

With a manufacturing capability of up to 2,300 productive hours per week, SG Instruments is at the larger end of the sub-contract manufacturing market. It has an annual turnover of £6m and is part of the Hyde Industrial Holdings group of companies. The company manufactures equipment and instrumentation for the scientific and semiconductor industries. At its site in Hyde, SGI has 2,500ft2 of class 10,000 cleanrooms and 1,500ft2 of class 100,000 cleanrooms. There are also various laminar flow (sub-assembly) cabinets classified at class 10. All of the electronic and electromechanical assembly is carried out within the cleanrooms. An additional unclassified clean assembly area of 2,000ft2, utilising a fully air-conditioned environment for general assembly work, complements the facility. SGI operates a machine shop with a broad range of vertical and horizontal machining centres with a cubic metre capacity. To further improve the service it offers, SGI has invested in the latest generation of CNC lathes utilising the facility of fully driven tooling. These lathes offer high efficiency by reducing the number of separate operations required to fully machine complex components. With its own CAD/CAM programming facility, SGI accepts electronic information directly from customers, as well as the off-line programming of its CNC machine shop. All equipment is made to customer specification and all staff are trained in-house, with 15-20 personnel working in the cleanrooms. In addition, there is an unclassified clean electrical testing area. Technical sales manager Phil Bocking says: "We offer complete supply solutions and our customers can come and discuss projects ranging from initial prototypes to full production and scheduled deliveries of fully tested equipment."