Reliance Precision
Based in Huddersfield, Reliance Precision have expanded their design and manufacturing facilities with guidance from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency.
Reliance Precision has over 100 years of engineering excellence, providing custom-built, high reliability, precision instrumentation to customers from a diverse range of global markets. Their engineering capabilities include design, development, prototyping, manufacturing, and assembly and test, complemented by a catalogue of precision motion control components and electro-mechanical assemblies.
In 2011 Reliance Precision began their journey to develop engineering services for the space industry. This was a natural evolution of their longstanding heritage in gears and motion control technology for the terrestrial aerospace sector, combined with over 30 years of building complex vacuum assemblies in a clean environment to meet the needs of the scientific sector. With support from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency, Reliance Precision have carefully expanded their design and manufacturing facilities and developed their operational processes to meet the stringent requirements of Space. Today, components manufactured by Reliance Precision to customer specifications are working in satellites in orbit and they have developed motor gearboxes designed specifically for GEO satellite solar arrays.
Reliance Precision has worked as a collaborative technical partner on a range of programmes to support designers responsible for both new and mature products, and were part of the supply chain for the successful Rosetta science mission to investigate Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
Our gearbox is used on Airbus’ OneSat and on Eurostar Neo satellites, while we have also manufactured gears used on the Rosetta European deep space probe.
Reliance Precision is also one of the founding members of the UK Space Mechanisms Working Group, providing a valuable link between mechanisms experts from the satellite primes, smaller industrial and research organisations, and academic institutions, together with Innovate UK. The group also has links to the UK Space Agency and European Space Agency which provides a strong foundation for sharing knowledge between the agencies and industry.