GKN

GKN plc is a British multinational automotive and aerospace components company headquartered in Redditch, Worcestershire. The company was formerly known as Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds and can trace its origins back to 1759 and the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

GKN is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

History

1759 to 1900

The origins of GKN lie in the founding of the Dowlais Ironworks in the village of Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, by Thomas Lewis and Isaac Wilkinson. John Guest was appointed manager of the works in 1767, having moved from Broseley. In 1786, John Guest was succeeded by his son, Thomas Guest, who formed the Dowlais Iron Company with his son-in-law William Taitt. Guest introduced many innovations and the works prospered.

Under Guest's leadership, alongside his manager John Evans, the Dowlais Ironworks gained the reputation of being "one of the World's great industrial concerns". Though the Bessemer process was licensed in 1856, nine years of detailed planning and project management were needed before the first steel was produced. The company thrived with its new cost-effective production methods, forming alliances with the Consett Iron Company and Krupp. By 1857 G.T. Clark and William Menelaus, his manager, had constructed the "Goat Mill", the world's most powerful rolling mill.

3D printing

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), refers to various processes used to synthesize a three-dimensional object. In 3D printing, successive layers of material are formed under computer control to create an object. These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry and are produced from a 3D model or other electronic data source. A 3D printer is a type of industrial robot.

Futurologists such as Jeremy Rifkin believe that 3D printing signals the beginning of a third industrial revolution, succeeding the production line assembly that dominated manufacturing starting in the late 19th century. Using the power of the Internet, it may eventually be possible to send a blueprint of any product to any place in the world to be replicated by a 3D printer with "elemental inks" capable of being combined into any material substance of any desired form.

3D printing in the term's original sense refers to processes that sequentially deposit material onto a powder bed with inkjet printer heads. More recently, the meaning of the term has expanded to encompass a wider variety of techniques such as extrusion and sintering-based processes. Technical standards generally use the term additive manufacturing for this broader sense.

GKN Driveline

GKN Driveline is a multinational automotive components manufacturer specialising in driveline technologies. A division of GKN plc, it employs around 22,000 people at 56 locations across 22 countries.

GKN Driveline is the world's largest producer of constant-velocity joints, which it pioneered for use in automobiles. Its other products include sideshafts, propshafts, power transfer units, differentials, AWD couplings, disconnects, electric rear axles, and electric drive transmissions.

History

The origin of GKN (Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds) goes back to 1759, and the founding of the Dowlais Ironworks by the industrialists Thomas Lewis and Isaac Wilkinson. It has changed shape and direction many times to hold its place in the engineering industry. The company took part in the railway boom in the early 1800s with its production of iron, then steel in the 1860s and, after the first world war, the automotive industry. It was the start of the company Globalization. The GKN Group had to expand into the automotive industry not only because of the growth of this business, but also to move with these more sophisticated products in the Commonwealth – mainland Europe and North America. GKN evolved geographically from its British base in the early nineteenth century to the USA and Western Europe.

Robert Llewellyn

Robert Llewellyn (born 10 March 1956, in Northampton, Northamptonshire) is an English actor, comedian and writer best known as the mechanoid Kryten in the hit TV sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf and as a presenter of the TV engineering gameshow Scrapheap Challenge. He is a science and technology enthusiast, a promoter of renewable technologies and electric cars and an atheist and skeptic who frequently gives talks at science and technology events. He is also active online.

Early career

Llewellyn's first foray into the world of show business started out as a hobby, organising a few amateur cabaret evenings in a riverside warehouse overlooking Tower Bridge in London. The shows were a great success and he eventually helped form an alternative comedy theatre group called the Joeys. Within six months he had stopped working as a shoemaker and started performing professionally with the group alongside Bernie Evans, Nigel Ordish and Graham Allum. The group toured Britain and France in the early 1980s with an initial idea of exploring sexual politics between men. Llewellyn wrote much of the material, and also began writing novels. The group split in 1985, having toured for years and done thousands of shows.