Gateway opens its doors to Europe with ferrite centre

Specialist component distributor, Gateway Electronic Components, has opened a ferrite core gapping and machining centre at its Cheshire facility, offering surface grinding and machining, test equipment, hardware and software support.

The ferrite and magnetic material distributor holds franchises for TDK, Ferroxcube and Fair-Rite and now extend its value-added services into the ferrite core gapping market, having identified the need for a service available across Europe.

Exploiting its stockholding of standard ferrite core geometries and sizes, the company can grind or machine cores to specified dimensions or AL value, in a service supplying bespoke modification for large and small volume requirements.

The investment by the ISO9001:2008-accredited company includes the installation of a CAD-based design and approval service, with an integrated ordering model, networked into its ATE equipment to capture test data for each batch of material handled. This, says the company, maintains full batch traceability on raw material and manufacturing process control at each stage of the programme.

Gateway’s managing director, Martin Ford commented: “The investment was customer-driven to begin with . . . . and now our machine shop is open for business. We have the machinery, the technical know-how, and the operators all in place; and we have vast stocks of all major core geometries readily available to sample prior to approval. This will strengthen our position as the ferrite specialist distributor for the UK and will also give us a unique opportunity in addressing the needs of an increasing number of customers across Europe,” he added.