Editor’s comment: May 2017

We decided that I would interview David on how the magazine began and its evolution. I didn’t take over the reins as editor until 2007 so the first 10 years as far as I’m concerned was something of a black hole. Getting a magazine off the ground is certainly not for the faint hearted and the early years were challenging but I guess the fact that I’m writing this 20 years on means we must be doing something right! Check out the article on page 17 of this month’s issue.

During a long career associated with metalcutting, David nominates the advent of CNC as being the most ground-breaking technological development. It’s hard to argue because it was a true game changer. Prior to its predecessor NC, practically everything was manual. Round shapes were turned on a lathe; square components were machined on a mill. Some of the highly complex prismatic components we manufacture today without batting an eyelid simply wouldn’t have been possible 35 years ago. It also marked the dawn of the programming age and meant that machining required much less manual intervention than ever before.

We’ve seen ups and downs with perhaps the most intolerable thing for me being successive governments in the 1980s and 90s deciding that the UK wasn’t going to be a manufacturing nation anymore and opting instead for a more service-based economy. I still simply can’t believe or accept that a country as steeped in manufacturing heritage as ours, today finds itself in a skills crisis.

Technology certainly hasn’t stood still and neither has PES. The magazine has shrunk in size from its original A3 format and we now have an active online presence but the magazine remains an important cornerstone of the business. I think a big part of its appeal is its accessibility. When David Rose launched the magazine in 1997 it was very much designed as a ‘shopfloor’ journal. 20 years on that hasn’t changed. On my travels I see copies in company foyers, on the shopfloor, in the offices and in the boardroom.

So to all our readers and advertisers – some of which have been with use since day one – thank you for your support over the past two decades.

Dave Tudor Editor