SprutCAM X helps 23-year-old British engineer win a prestigious international award

SprutCAM X is a quick-to-learn CAD/CAM solution for the next generation of creative and entrepreneurial engineers. It enables them to quickly create complex, innovative products. This was the case for two engineers from Salisbury, UK, who won a prestigious European award for their custom-built motorcycle.

Jordan Hicks and Larry Houghton both work for Lamb Engineering, a contract machining and fabrication company like many others in the UK.

A project that has just come to fruition and has led to acclaim on the European continent is a custom motorcycle. M00, as it is called, was designed and built by Jordan Hicks and Larry Houghton as a part-time project.

The bike recently won Best in Show at the highly acclaimed Bigtwin Bikeshow competition in the Netherlands that took place in November 2022 – which is regarded as one of the biggest shows in Europe for custom bike building.

The bike build was a collaboration between Larry, who has many years of engineering, design and bike building experience, and Jordan, a design engineer and machinist, with this being his first bike build.

How the choice fell on SprutCAM X

The bike was mostly machined by 24-year-old Jordan, who introduced the 3D CAD software package SolidWorks into the business which the firm has found good for drawing and design, but was not as efficient in providing a machining package. Jordan explains:

“Instead, we purchased a software package called SprutCAM X and since then have been using the bike build as the learning curve, exceeding the potential of what we would generally use the CAM package for. As we are a machine shop, we decided to machine all parts and with no welding, only interference fit’s, bonding adhesive and rivets to fix the frame together. We have machined every single component on this bike apart from the tyres, engine internals i.e., crank, cams, piston, bolts (apart from the star bolts spotted around the bike), bearings and gearbox sprockets.”

This bike build has been massive learning curve for Larry and Jordan, especially for Jordan, as throughout the bike build his SolidWorks drawing skills have developed, while he has introduced another aspect to the company in 3D CAM machining software (SprutCAM X) and 4th axis machining capabilities that come with it.

We at SputCAM Tech are happy to help engineers and entrepreneurs all over the world launch new products using our software and we will continue doing everything we can to support our customers’ innovations offering a natural and powerful environment that is fast to learn and easy to use.

The text above is an excerpt from the article that originally appeared in the Machinery Magazine, February 2023.