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Are you ready to start your career in engineering? Apprenticeships with the Erodex Group

Are you ready to start your career in engineering?

Do you want to learn from the best, most experienced engineers, earning while you’re learning, at Europe’s biggest state-of-the-art machine shop?

Are you looking for a company that’s passionate about putting young talent at the forefront of their workforce, encouraging the next generation of engineers?

If you answered yes to the above, then you’re in the right place.

Who is Erodex?

Watch our video below for a brief overview of Erodex.

Erodex – The leading edge for apprenticeships.

At Erodex, we strive to maintain the leading edge in everything we do, and that includes our apprenticeship scheme. An apprentice joining Erodex can benefit from the following.

  • A competitive salary
  • Career support and finding the right route for you
  • Investment in your training and development
  • Working towards professional qualifications
  • Learning new skills from real work experience
  • Yearly incremental salary increases
  • Learning from world class colleagues
  • Making friends for life

If you want to earn while you learn, we pay more than the national minimum wage, and during your first year, you can expect to earn £6 per hour, with gradual increases in line with age, skills and national minimum wage across year 2.

We aim to develop your skills, and offer the best workplace experience we can in order to home grow talent that we can retain, once the apprenticeship is complete.

What types of apprenticeships are available to you?

We offer apprenticeships in multiple disciplines across Erodex sites. Here, you can hear from some of our past apprentices and their career journey

So how do apprenticeships work?

As an apprentice, you are a paid employee at Erodex.

Most of your time will be spent with us learning in our world class machining facility and supporting departments.

In year one, you will spend two days per week at college, developing your understanding of engineering via a mix of classroom and workshop learning as you work towards your professional qualification.

From year two onwards, you will spend one day per week at college and the rest of your week back with us within the business.

Erodex apprenticeships start at level 3 (A-Level equivalent) which lasts for a minimum of three years.

We also offer progression up to degree level as part of our apprenticeship scheme for the right individuals and based on your chosen role within the business.

Our commitment to you

At Erodex we are serious about apprenticeships.

In return for your hard work and commitment, we provide you with world class training, education, and life experiences.

We are committed to providing a great apprentice experience for our apprentices.

That’s why we are pursuing accreditation for the Make UK Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Kitemark through Next Gen Makers, which recognises excellent employers of engineering apprentices in the UK.

This means that you know that when you choose an Erodex apprenticeship, you’re choosing a company that cares about you.

Apply now!

We have two fantastic apprenticeships this year, the vacancies are:

Apprentice Engineering Technician (CNC Machinist)
Apprentice Engineering Technician (Grinding)

For more information on these positions, or to apply, please contact deborah@nextgenmakers.co.uk

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Blog: Our EDM Industry view – w/ Andrew McFarlane, Sales Manager Erodex UK

We are now past the halfway mark of 2022, so we thought the time was right to check in with Andrew McFarlane, Erodex UK Sales Manager, to get his latest view of the EDM industry and more specifically, how Erodex are helping customers gain the leading edge.

With multiple new product launches, the development of partnerships with customers to assist with cost per part reduction and even new website launches, there’s lots of ground to cover.

Here, we get Andy’s top five updates:

1 – New website launched for Fast Hole Tubing

www.fastholetubing.com A dedicated destination for 100% Flow Tested Precision Tubing for Fast Hole Drilling.

  • Brass and Copper tubes manufactured to the highest level of quality
  • 100% flow tested
  • Cleaned and dried before packaging to ensure freedom from oxidation and blockages.
  • Available in any size over 0.1mm/0.00391 Inches OD and up to 900mm/35.433 Inches in length
  • Qualified by aerospace primes and machine tools manufacturers worldwide.

2 – Performance up, costs down with Betterbrass

Erodex stock an unbeatable range of EDM wire, enabling us to provide the perfect solution for your application. Using our experience and expert engineers, we work closely with you to ensure optimum performance is achieved.

Most recently, our customers have been hugely impressed with the performance of Betterbrass, a next generation special alloy brass wire from Bedra (Berkenhoff) Germany.

Customers are experiencing less downtime due to fewer wire breaks, better threading and reduced cycle time – sometimes up to 20% depending on the machine and the operator.

3 – Erodex supporting customers with ‘cost per part reduction’

Erodex have been supporting customers within the Aerospace and Industrial Gas Turbine sectors with a ‘cost per part reduction’ program focused on EDM Die Sink. This has involved partnering with customers who can then leverage the expertise of Erodex Engineers to make EDM processes more efficient, increase productivity, reduce scrap parts and reduce cycle times.

At a time where cost down is all important, we know that we can help customers achieve that goal.

Working in partnership with our customers, we look at the volume, size of parts, the machine, and what the company wants to achieve, and have been able to identify and help to implement bespoke turnkey solutions for each, optimising their end to end process. To date, this has included redesigning fixtures, tooling holders and advising on electrode redesign.

Such solutions have enabled customers to reduce the number of machines required to produce a part, reduce setup times, increase ‘right first time’ and significantly decreasing cycle times by switching from copper to graphite.

4 – Right Graphite choices also leading to reduced energy consumption

Working with customers, we have found that if a company is using a competitors grade of graphite they may need to make 2 or 3 electrodes to sink the part, whereas by switching to Poco for example, they could reduce the number of electrodes that they make and still get the same number of cavities sunk.

If a company can reduce say 2-3 hours off electrode manufacture, they will benefit from lower machining costs and consequently they will reduce energy and other associated costs for that part. During a period where energy prices are at an all-time high, this benefit – whilst secondary to increased productivity – has been met with a positive response.

5 – Additional new products launching

Erodex continues to build on our market leading choice of EDM consumables with more new product introductions.

Keep an eye out soon for new product updates such as clamping rails for wire EDM machines, starter packs for work-holding and electrode holding for Die Sink machines.

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Erodex support workplace initiatives to inspire greater health and wellbeing

Black Country based Aerospace supplier Erodex UK are supporting the Workplace Health at One You Walsall and Healthy Years Ahead initiatives to help its’ employees and local community to become more aware of the benefits of living a healthy, active lifestyle.

Workplace Health at One You Walsall, funded by Walsall Council, is a free healthy lifestyle service dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of all residents across Walsall.

Their services exist to help residents make the best choices for their lifestyle, from health and fitness to emotional wellbeing.

Erodex HR Manager Deborah Bayliss comments: “As a business we were looking to engage our employees in health and wellbeing initiatives and saw the opportunity to become involved with Workplace Health at One You Walsall, in addition to the Healthy Years Ahead initiative, which works with individuals of 40 years of age and older.

“So far, we have held a workplace event to engage employees and introduce the initiatives. From this we gained expressions of interest in services offered by the organisations.

“There has been a great response and we are looking to book in a practitioner to deliver two full days of health assessments for our employees. From these we will plan future health and wellbeing sessions in the workplace and signpost to outside services and organisations”.

Erodex are the UK’s leading supplier of graphites and EDM consumables to the Aerospace industry, as well as state-of-the-art graphite machining. The company employs 85 people across two sites in Halesowen and Darlaston, West Midlands as well as a site in Croydon.

To find out more about Workplace Health at One You Walsall, visit: https://www.oneyouwalsall.com