Williams F1

18 Mar

Williams F1 influenced me in many ways, to keep doing what I do today. I can’t thank this company and the people working here enough.

If you’re tired of the text, just scroll to the bottom for a gallery of the Williams Museum.

My first F1 role

I first stepped foot in the Williams factory during the summer of 2019. It was for an interview.

I just finished my Pc-Dmis course, that I paid for myself, because the previous employer wouldn’t do. I will not name them, because other than this one little disagreement we had they were awesome,

The manager back then told me that he is impressed by my commitment that I paid for the course and they would be in touch later.

I haven’t heard from them for about 2 months.

Eventually, in September of that year my phone rang and they invited me for a second round.

I gladly accepted and I was offered a nightshift role.

I spent one and a half years there, learnt a lot and survived Covid. I am also one of the lucky ones who still met Frank Williams, when he was still roaming the factory every evening with his caretaker. He wasn’t in a great condition, but he had a little flat built on the top of the factory and lived there, so whenever he wanted, he would just come down in his Wheelchair and visit the soldiers on the ground. Outstanding commitment.

I ended my employment due to a problematic management choice they made. I went to pursue a management role at Multax Ltd.

Williams as a contractor

A little more than two years after I left Williams F1, I ended up coming back for a contract role. I was just setting up my polishing workshop and I took a weekend shift contract role.

The polishing workshop was a massive blunder, but at least the weekend shift contract kept me floating and it made me even more grateful for the work I get from this company.

The contract lasted a little more than 6 months, in the meantime I completely changed my business to fully focus on Metrology. I picked up some other work as well with Multax and Atlantic precision and I kept working for those companies on various contracts for more than a year after.

During this 6 months at Williams, I just arrived in the middle of the renovations of their Inspection department.

3 brand new Wenzel LH65 CMMs with PH20 heads, a LH108 with the Revo 2 system and a bunch of other high tech metrology kit.

Even though as a contractor training was off the table, I picked up Quartis, Wenzel’s metrology suite very quickly and soon became the go to person for advice.

Switch to PolyWorks

Since I left them, Williams quietly made the change from Quartis to Polyworks, which I was sad to see as I thought Quartis was great. It was certainly a great experience with the Revo.

In November, 2025 the phone rang and I was asked whether I could help with some CMM problems, so I took my cape, jumped off a building and got back to Williams as fast as I could.

This time, instead of CMM programming and inspection I was tasked to pick up PolyWorks and streamline it, so that the team can use it in an efficient manner.

Unfortunately or fortunately the main programmer left and some of his work and the knowledge of how to use the automated macro has been lost.

Within a few months I got up to speed, not only with the programming of PolyWorks on a 5-axis system, but also with the macro side of things.

I am still working on the development of new solutions for Williams.

I have created numerous custom solutions over the months. Just to name a few:

Automated Operator tasks: Populating work order and part information, and organizing Dataloop files with only a few clicks
Automated Master Spline tooth detection: A macro that based on a simple Pitch Diameter size and three surfaces selected on a CAD model, detect and create a pair of points symmetrically on each side of the tooth and constructs a midpoint to provide an easy way to verify tooth timing and spline orientation.
Feature array: Polyworks lacks the ability to offset features in a grid or a circular pattern. I developed a Macro function that does exactly that, similar to the Pc-Dmis Paste and Pattern.
Automatic programme templates, popup windows to alert for different conditions
Created a custom GD&T calculator for True positions: I wasn’t satisfied with the way PolyWorks handles the TEDs derived from a True Position measurement so I replaced it with a macro that does the calculations I was looking for. This eliminates some user errors, where parts could be passed, due to an incorrect calculation in the software.

If all goes to plan I might come back to help next year as well, be it programming, new macros or training, I will be glad to work for Williams again.

Below I posted a picture of myself in reception and further down you can see a gallery of the Williams museum, an absolute treat, every time I visit.