Workshop and Fabrication Technician

WORKSHOP AND FABRICATION TECHNICIAN LEC GROUP Building, prototyping, machinery and robotics across LEC Robotics, LEC Beverages and the LEC offices. Fulham, London | Full time, five days a week, office and workshop based | £33,000 WHO WE ARE London Export Corporation is one of the UK's longest established trading companies, founded in the early 1950s with more than seventy years of UK China trade history. Today the group spans LEC Robotics, the exclusive UK distributor and deployer of commercial service robots, LEC Beverages, the exclusive UK distributor of Tsingtao beer, and LEC AI, which builds the AI systems that run our whole group. Our Fulham headquarters is the House of Robotics, a working showroom where clients see commercial robots operating live, with our offices above it. Robotics is a big part of daily life here, and you will be around robots constantly. You do not need to arrive knowing them, we will teach you our machines properly, but you will become one of the people in the building who genuinely understands them, inside and out. Our whole group runs on our own AI platform, and the person in this role will work alongside it daily. THE ROLE We are looking for a maker. Someone who can take an idea and physically build it: design a part, print it on a 3D printer, work metal and off the shelf components around it, wire in the electrics, and keep iterating until it works. Simple, clever prototype builds that solve real problems across the group, from production tools to purpose built devices and gadgets, engineered properly and finished to a professional standard. THE KIND OF THINGS YOU WILL BUILD A vacuum pickup gripper for cans and bottles. A handheld tool with an array of suction cups that lifts multiple cans or bottles at a time, designed, printed and configured by you, from the suction layout to the handle to the airline. End effectors for collaborative robot arms. Custom grippers, clamps and attachments that mount on a cobot arm and connect to builds of your own, for example a suction pickup head that lets the arm lift and place bottles automatically. A semi automated labelling tool for difficult shapes. A handheld or hand guided contraption that applies self adhesive labels cleanly onto round and awkward surfaces of cans and bottles, held by the operator but applying automatically as it goes. Reconfigured robots. Taking the commercial robots we already distribute and adapting them for new uses: new trays, mounts, attachments and setups that turn a standard machine into the right machine for a specific client or job. Workshop and facility builds. Custom racking and shelving for the warehouse and upstairs, fixtures, jigs, mounts, stands and one off builds across the offices and showroom. ALONGSIDE THE BUILDING You keep our physical world running. Assembling and stripping down robots, setting up and looking after the machines, keeping the showroom and warehouse working, tidy and in order, moving machines and equipment so everything sits right, loading and unloading the truck, and going out on robot deployments to client sites. The building work is the heart of the job, but this side matters too, and the right person takes pride in both. WHAT YOU CAN DO Build things with your hands, end to end. 3D printing, basic metalwork, hand and power tools, assembly from drawings or from your own head. Basic electrics and pneumatics. Wiring a build, connecting motors, sensors and suction systems, making a mechanism move safely. Figure things out. You find solutions with the parts available, you improvise, you iterate, and you do not wait for someone else to solve it. An interest in robotics. You want to work with robots, learn how they go together and come apart, and understand them properly. Any existing robotics, cobot, end effector, automation or machine knowledge is a genuine advantage. Practical and reliable. Comfortable lifting, moving and installing. Full UK driving licence for deployments. Any of these are a bonus: welding, CAD (Fusion 360 or SolidWorks), Arduino or basic control electronics, vacuum and pneumatic systems experience, vehicle or machine maintenance background, field service experience, and any understanding of how builds connect to software and AI. Much of this group runs on AI day to day, and anyone who has ever built something that connects hardware to software, sensors feeding data, devices controlled by code, AI connected machines, has a genuine edge here. WHO YOU ARE A builder by nature. The person whose garage, shed or bench is full of things they made. Fast, hungry and proud of your work. This is a busy group moving quickly, the days are full, and you will never be bored. Three month probation applies, as it does for every role at every level of the company including the CEO. HOW WE HIRE Click Apply Now and you will be taken to our website to complete your application. Please upload your CV there along with anything specific to this role. At the bottom of your CV, or as a second document uploaded with it, include a BUILDS section. Show us things you have actually made: fixes, contraptions, automated or semi automated builds, cheap and clever rather than commercial grade, as long as they worked. Photos, descriptions or links all count. In that same section, tell us briefly how you would approach one or more of the three builds described above: the vacuum pickup gripper for cans and bottles, the end effector for a cobot arm, or the hand guided labelling tool for round surfaces. A few lines on your thinking and what you would use is enough. Applications without a builds section will not make the shortlist. Strong candidates come to the House of Robotics, meet the robots, and talk us through their ideas in person. We move fast on the right person.