Category: Machinery for Education

We are delighted to announce being enlisted to join the Design and Technology Association. The group are long standing backers of high quality quality design, engineering and technology education.

By providing a wide range of educational resources for all age groups, ranging from primary through to secondary and beyond, the group aims to champion the field of D&T at all levels. They offer support in the form of course materials, curriculum and training, as well as an awards system to recognize excellence within the sector.

Design and Technology is about providing opportunities for students to develop their capability, combining their designing and making skills with knowledge and understanding.

The Design and Technology Association

We think Warco and the association make a good fit. We’ve always been strong believers in the importance of engineering in education, and the teaching of design technology is at the root of this.

For many years now we have worked closely with educators across the country – and academic spectrum – to help meet the requirements of the modern D&T department, by offering solutions such as tailored machinery installations to enable the training of engineers. We now look forward to seeing how we can build on this even more as a member of the group.

It was in 1975 that we started selling machinery and tools, and over the course of the last 47 years we have supplied many thousands of machines to customers worldwide.

To all of those that have chosen to buy from us, we’d like to take the this opportunity to say thanks. Whether you’re a budding model engineer just starting out needing a tool for a new home workshop, or a volume buyer at a household name company, we still appreciate every single order – even after all this time, and no matter how big we get.

We’re not normally the types to shout about it, but wanted to briefly share a list of a few highlights from some of the better known names that have bought from us and use Warco machines – that we remembered at the time of writing at least. (Plus we noticed some folks who perhaps hadn’t come across us before had searched “Are Warco lathes or machines any good”, so it was probably about time we posted something like this – by way of reassurance that they were judged good enough for some leading names in sectors such as aerospace, defence and education, as well as well known makes like JCB and Rolls-Royce.)

Automotive

• BMW Mini
• Ford
• Jaguar Land Rover Classic
• McLaren
• Mercedes AMG F1
• Rolls-Royce Motor Cars

Construction

• Balfour Beatty Plc
• BAM Construction
• GKN
• JCB
• Kier Group Plc

Defence

• HMNB Clyde
• Marshall
• Ministry of Defence

Education

Hundreds of schools, colleges and universities across the UK, including

• Bath University
• Bristol University
• Cambridge University
• Edinburgh University
• Eton College
• Goldsmiths
• Imperial College London
• Liverpool University
• Manchester University
• Nottingham University
• Oxford University
• University College London

Food

• Arla
• Cadbury’s
• Coca-Cola
• John West
• Kraft Heinz
• Ocado
• Walkers

Museums

• National Railway Museum
• The British Museum
• Victoria & Albert Museum

Transport

Too many to list, but a number of companies within these industry examples

• Aerospace
• Railways
• Shipbuilding 

Other notables

• BBC
• Dyson
• House of Lords
• Tata Steel

Those are just some of the more memorable names we thought of while writing this, so we’ve undoubtedly missed some out, but at least this should go some way to showing that when you buy from Warco, you’re in good company.

Something we are always keen to see is when our machines are used in education and training, as we are firm believers in the importance of teaching practical engineering and design & technology skills. In recent years it’s been great to see that alongside more traditional academic subjects, there has been a renewed focus on more vocational qualifications.

We are sure that the teaching taking place in a range of schools, academies and colleges up and down the country, as well as investment in apprenticeships, will go a long way to help create the next generation of engineers.

We’re now almost in our fifth decade of supplying training facilities of all kinds, but there was one in particular we wanted to briefly look back on in this post.

A little while ago we were asked by Riverside College in Cheshire, England to supply and install a variety of metalworking machines.

Riverside College have become renowned for further education in the UK, winning some prestigious education accreditations including the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) Gold award in recognition of their commitment to teaching and student outcomes.

Most notably, Riverside has also been voted top further education college in the vocational sector by the Department for Education. That’s number one in the whole country – and they continued to be ranked in that position for four years running.

We supplied and installed a range of equipment as part of an all new department, and in this post we’ve added a few pics to show how it turned out.

See also:

Warco at JCB Academy

Warco at Prospects College

Warco at WMG Academy

Prospects College asked us to supply and install a large workshop as part of a new training centre they were building. As one of the most prominent providers of vocational training in the South East, Prospects have over 40 years experience in education.

They have an innovative approach to teaching which involves working in partnership with businesses, which enables them to deliver a range of unique training courses tailored to match the skill requirements of industry.

One focus of the college in particular is engineering, and as part of this they approached us to see if we could help. We were able to work with them to offer a fitting that was tailored to meet their very specific requirements, involving equipping a set of workshops with a range of Warco machinery and tools.

We’ve added a few pics of the installation below.

Now those machines are being used intensively on a regular basis, helping with the teaching of engineering apprenticeships and hopefully training a new generation of future engineers.

At Warco we don’t consider any project too large or small, and are always happy to offer advice or a bespoke quote centred around your requirements. So whether you’re looking to update a garden shed workshop or are after some machines for a large scale installation – and anything in between – we’ll be happy to help.

You can find our full product range on the Warco site, and if you have any questions or are after a quote, please feel free to get in touch.

We’ve always been strong believers in the benefits of equipping a new generation with engineering skills, so some of our most rewarding work is working with schools and education facilities to supply ranges of machinery for students to learn from.

From small scale private training facilities to state of the art new build academies, we’ve been involved with projects at every end of the education spectrum and are proud to have been involved with all of them.

We recently supplied a range of machinery to an all new facility, the WMG Academy in Coventry.

The opening was covered in the Coventry Telegraph.

This new state of the art facility will be teaching students vocational and practical skills, with the aim of boosting future career prospects and gearing up students to work in industry. With a focus on the automotive, aerospace and manufacturing sectors, the academy is working in conjunction with the University of Warwick as well as partners including Jaguar Land Rover and Bosch.

We were able to supply and install a range of machinery tailored around the very specific requirements of the teaching workshops and it was a really interesting project to be involved with.

Now that a new term has started, it’s great to hear that the machines we supplied over the school breakdown period are already being put to good use.

Full details of the academy can be found at wmgacademy.org.uk.

We’re highly aware safety is a paramount in a school or college environment, so we always specify stop switches, spindle brakes and other precautionary measures. Everything we supply is fully endorsed and follows all the latest guidelines, and we work with highly qualified and talented individuals who are certified to handle any aspect of machine maintenance, safety and installation.

Other posts on Warco machine installations include:

JCB Academy

Prospects College

Following on from our post detailing an installation of Warco lathes & milling machines at Prospects College, we wanted to share some details of another machine tool set up we provided at the JCB Academy in Staffordshire.

The JCB Academy is an all new centre for developing a new generation of engineers and future business leaders, offering a wide range of practical vocational courses. All teaching is backed by the central principle of learning by doing.

The building that houses the Academy was originally a mill, built in the late 18th Century by the famous industrial entrepreneur and engineer Richard Arkwright. It went on to be completely transformed as part of the JCB project, and is now a state of the art educational centre for 21st Century students studying business and engineering.

As part of the process of establishing the facilities, JCB contacted us with a request to set up and equip large scale workshops with a comprehensive range of machinery, in keeping with their aim of creating one of the UK’s largest sites dedicated to the teaching of engineering.

They were after workshops fully set up for work on real-life engineering projects, and we were happy to be able to undertake a bespoke installation of Warco machinery.

We’ve included some photos below of Warco machines in place just after being fitted and installed. Note that rather than the usual Warco green you might expect, as part of the request we supplied all the machinery in bespoke JCB themed colours.

The range of machinery we supplied and handled all aspects of installation for included:

• 15 GH1440 Lathes
• 7 GH1330 Lathes
• 6 4VS Turret Mills
• 10 DT16 Drills
• 11 DT25 Drills
• Range of metal bandsaws and woodworking machinery.

JCB Academy was officially opened by The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, you can read about that on the BBC news site. It’s now in its second academic year of training a new generation of engineers and business leaders, something we’re proud to have been a part of.

For further reading about the scale of the project, there was an interesting article published in Technology In Education magazine which we’ve included below.