Report on the visit to ACS
John Aldersley kindly produced a report on the recent visit to ACS in Leeds. Thank you John for sharing this with the members. Here is his report:-
“It was a great visit (Thursday 26th Feb 2026 7.00pm to 9.00pm), with some very interesting stuff going on with a lot of ‘tech’ involved.
I extend a big thank you to Taylor and Andy, for hosting the visit. A small number attended. I would like to thank them on behalf of Graham our president along with Neil, John, Andrew, Jas, Howard and myself as we had a friendly greeting with tea and coffee on offer.
We were given an insight into the company, having been family owned, the use of high tech, and Taylor told us about the move from 2-dimensional drawings into 3-D drawings. We established that the company were big on the design of building facades. This has now turned into manufacturing and the ability to control the process at their three sites. Design systems were mentioned, Solid Works being one of them, and the integration with other CAD systems, no mean feat is a the understatement of the day !
The company is in the process of complying with new laws after major failures at Grenfell Tower in London.
Taylor has the task of bringing traceability to the whole operation, not just for material at goods in, but each operation has to be fully traceable, using very involved computer programmes that went right over my head ! It was apparent to all of us how clued up the company is.
Andy took over the talk and the highlight for me was the link between drawings and designs being converted to 3-D and then using the laser cutters to create 2-D shapes by nesting the parts in the most economical way, using large sheets of various thicknesses of stainless-steel. Andy said later that he has yet to find a good computer system that can nest material better than the human eye, so up yours ‘AI’.
Andy commented that tolerances were not what he was used to having worked previously in the oil and gas industry. My thoughts were that the accumulated errors on a multi-storey building would be enormous, so I imagine they work to close tolerances considering the type of work that they do.
We then took a look around the shop floor with Andy and Taylor (I appreciated the loud rock music been listened to by the two late shift workers !) showing us the locking system for the brick work. John Pease asked about the grooving of the brick and how the fancy cuts outs were done for the corner brick. The locking system was very impressive to an onlooker as you saw a ‘bog standard’ brick wall, not a modular, robot precision build.
Andy had saved a nested piece of stainless sheet for the ABB robot to pick and bend using the Trumpf press brake.
The picture above shows the laser cutter bed, which wasn’t in use on the visit. The robot arm with the suction cups, connected with the blue pipes to the right in the above photo, loaded the folding machine (which I believe is called a press brake, but as I am a machinist I may be wrong). The Trumpf press was fed by a row of what I would call carousels, with pre laser cut nested parts on a type of conveyor for want of a better word.
The press is at the top left hand corner adjacent to the ABB robot arm. The blue shelf like racking is where the laser cut material is held with one laser being to the right and in front of the rack system.
This image is taken form the Trumpf website showing the tooling that forms the bending.
We had a look at a couple of welding bays, this being Neil’s domain. Andy said the welders are all certified, or as is known “coded”. The welding booths had a great extraction system and having worked in a few places, I thought it was the best I have seen and on par with the Leeds Welding Company. Welding was MIG (Metal Inert Gas) and we had seen a video of some robotic welding earlier.
We did have a look at the shop floor canteen area and t was immaculately clean with stainless steel throughout as Andy said the works and staff canteen has the same standard. I would say you have to look after the proper workers, the same as the non producing staff. I can say that as I have been both.
We heard about the sustainability of the company especially the solar panels, which proved to be a bit of an issue and a learning curve regards the meter they had initially with both Taylor and Andy talking about the teething problems of selling the excess back to the grid. All that is now sorted after a good few years, so word to the wise it can be problematic, as excess can be (pardon the pun) charged for.
The power generated drops off in time due to the panels getting dirty, requiring cleaning twice a year, and the savings were very impressive, but it requires a forward thinking management to commit to it.
Other things I picked up on were filters are installed in the factory. An ongoing investigation with sensors to detect what I would call a ‘whiff’, the source to be confirmed. I have visited the recycle centre twice and wonder if it location and proximity to the plant could be causing issues, the stink is staggering… !
To sum up, we all enjoyed the visit. Graham said a few words to support that at the end, expressing many thanks to ACS for allowing us to look around. They are hoping to be involved with the Elland Road stadium extension, so good look with that. It was a real eye opener for me, so thanks to Taylor and Andy for giving up their own time to show us around. Andy offered a tour of the other unit, further down the road, we decided not to go, case we got lost, well Howard and Neil wouldn’t have, but I would !”
John Aldersley – March 2026
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