Braintree Precision Components Ltd, 2016

Recordings made in response to archival recordings made at the former RHP ball plant in Chelmsford.

David Ford, General Manager at Braintree Precision Components Ltd, was very kind in letting me spend a couple of hours recording the variety of machines at their two sites in Braintree. As well as giving me a short history of local engineering companies, and their connections to partners all around the world, he was very generous in giving me time and space to explore the sites and make recordings of the many machines.

Their operators were also very accommodating and informative, as, apart from a few years when I worked on a site with a forklift hire company with its engineers and fitters, I have very little knowledge of this kind of business. I did however remember the smell of grinding metal and cutting (coolant) fluid. Having the initial focus of the old recordings around ball bearings, I didn’t actually see any balls at BPC, but I did see plenty of bearings of a variety of shapes and sizes, and the processes and machines that create them.