Dream machines: metalworking at McLaren

Engineering sectors don’t come any more demanding than Formula One. Every component designed from scratch, often from exotic materials; extreme operating conditions, with heat, vibration, pollution and endurance to cope with; and a hard and fast deadline: races are every two weeks, and if you haven’t got the part to the grid by Sunday morning, then you might as well not have bothered.

It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that for the F1 teams, reliability and short cycle times are close to an obsession. For McLaren, this has led to a partnership with Japanese machine tool builder Yamazaki Mazak to kit out the machine shop at its gleaming Technology Centre (MTC) in Surrey.

When McLaren moved to the MTC in 2003, explained Simon Roberts, operations director for McLaren Racing, it was a chance for the team to reduce the amount of work it contracted out and bring production in-house, where it could control every aspect of design and manufacture. ‘For uprights, for example, when we contracted them out, we’d have an eight-week lead time. Since we brought the production in-house, we can machine an upright in 24 hours, with a five-week total lead time for the part.’