GUEST BLOG: IPF Ltd are celebrating their 50th year of manufacturing bespoke plastic parts

As we enter our 50th year since being founded by Bill Bloomfield SNR in 1969, we thought we would reflect on a bit of our History;

In 1969 IPF started to machine and fabricate bespoke plastic components for a wide range of industries. Bill SNR was approached by Eon productions to machine A `Perspex Aquarium bed`, to feature in the James bond film `Diamonds are forever`. Sean Connery and Jill St. John feature in the image lying on the beautifully made Perspex bed below.

One of Bills biggest achievements at the time came in 1976 where IPF were the only company in the UK able to produce an extremely high quality part used for the world’s first brain scanner. IPF went from strength to strength gaining high profile customers ranging from Aston Martin, Monarch aircraft, to The National Heart and Chest Hospital, and The Institute of Child Health… to name a few! He even made a Perspex `Full English` for the largest UK Perspex distributer at the time!

Due to the business’s constant progression, IPF continued to invest to be at the forefront of new technology, and when the 3D Printing industry emerged, IPF invested in the latest high end equipment to start up a 3D Printing bureau, to run alongside its well established machining business, offering the best of cutting edge and traditional technologies.

In 2014 IPF were among the first to own a Polyjet Connex 500 multi-material and colour 3D printer in the UK. IPF have since been involved with a multitude of industries, 3D Printing props for movies, such as the Starlord mask for `Guardians of the Galaxy`, as well as assisting in medical developments with our HP MJF, collaborating with `Prosfit` and their life changing custom made prosthetic sockets, regulated for weight bearing up to 125 kg!

We have since gained even more high-profile customers in the Automotive, Defence, Aerospace, Medical and Movie industries. Due to the sensitive industries that we work with, and the NDA’s in place we cannot specify who, but products that have been professionally and carefully prototyped by us, have featured in some of the latest blockbuster movies, TV advertising, and products that are likely to be being used daily by yourselves; such as smart phones or even wearable technology!

In our 50th year of innovation, we have had breakthroughs in Laser Welding applications for medical manifolds and micro-fluidics, as well as investments into 5-Axis machining for complex shapes and high speed production. Continued developments in CNC Machining, Diffusion Bonding and Fabrication along with extensive high-volume production capabilities now available with our Additive Manufacturing for prototypes and production parts.

The 3D printing and plastic machining industry is forever evolving, and IPF assure its new and long-standing clients, that we will remain devoted to constantly move forward with these exciting advancing technologies, as well as nurture and perfect our 50 years of experience.

Visit Industrial Plastic Fabrications Ltd on stand A31 at Subcon 4-6 June 2019 - register now for free at www.subconshow.co.uk/register

Interview with Simon Garwood - R4E Innovation Manager at WMG

Simon Garwood is R4E Innovation Manager at WMG. At The Engineer Conference in June, he is presenting ‘WMG - Electric Vehicle Supply Chain: challenges and opportunities’ on 6 June at 11:15. We caught up with him before the show.

What opportunities exist for UK engineering in relation to creating a domestic supply chain for electric vehicles?

The short answer is every opportunity. The innovation that is facilitating electric vehicles is well understood in this country, if not invented here, so UK engineering companies must be in a position to ‘catch the ball’ and be able to scale up the manufacture.

What are the challenges and how is the market currently shaping up?

To a certain extent, it’s like the Wild West with respect to electrification, with some very modest sized companies supplying key components to OEMs and tier 1s. Scaling up production to be able to keep this business is a key challenge.

Is Government doing enough to help this process? If not, what more should they be doing?  

Government is doing much to encourage UK engineering, though how the support gets to SMEs is somewhat fragmented and confusing. Clarifying the route to support is the first priority.

How do you feel about Brexit and the impact it may have on UK engineering and manufacturing?

Uncertainty can lead to delays in investment and uncertainty is not good for business.

What are you most looking forward to at The Engineer Conference/Expo, Subcon and Advanced Manufacturing this summer?

The opportunity to Network and talk to UK manufacturing companies large and small regarding their readiness for vehicle electrification.

What would you put in Engineering Room 101?

The term ‘Industry 4.0’ as it creates a whole world of understanding and turns into a sales pitch rather than tools to be applied to help improve productivity by improving the information available from processes by linking them together, and most of all creating insight from the data to inform decision making.

The Engineer Conference takes place 4-5 June at NEC, Birmingham, and is co-located with Advanced Manufacturing, The Engineer Expo and Subcon. Register now for a free visitor pass HERE.

Interview with Elizabeth Donnelly - WES

WES is 100 years old in June - congratulations - tell us why you were founded all those years ago, if and how you have achieved your goal, and what progress has been made in that time? 

Thank you! WES was founded in 1919 in response to the pressure women were put under at the end of the First World War to leave the workforce to release jobs for men returning from the forces. These women founded WES, not only to resist this pressure, but also to promote engineering as a rewarding job for women as well as men.

Our objects haven’t changed in that time. WES was established to promote the education, training and practice of engineering among women, to advance the education of the public concerning the study and practice of engineering among women, and to relieve poverty amongst women in engineering. We are still promoting these objects, though 100 years ago WES was emphasising that women could be engineers, now our focus is more that women should be engineers, and we relieve poverty by helping women into work. 

So, what's next for WES? What are your future goals? 

We want to continue to support women in engineering as our greatest strength is our network, and we are still making history. We held the first Women Apprentices’ Conference in 2018 and it was such a success we want to run this annually from now on. We also formed the University Group Board last year to support our Student  Groups and we are looking at forming Cluster Groups to support BAME women engineers and Retired Engineers.

We have also announced a Census into women’s experience in engineering, and in future we hope to be the repository for a lot of research on women in engineering. And we are continuing with International Women in Engineering Day on the 23 June 2019, our 100th birthday, which we launched five years ago, as well as celebrating the Top 50 Women in Engineering for the fourth year, with the theme of Current and Former Apprentices this year.

You did some research a couple of years ago that stated around 20,000 women had left the workforce to have children now wish to return. Has that number diminished or grown? What are/can businesses/industry/the Government do to facilitate their return? 

I don’t have the current figures, but we started STEM Returners in an effort to make it easier for women to return from career breaks. We advise businesses to pilot “returnships” to ease returners back into the workplace and get their skills up to date. In these times of 24/7 manufacturing, every job is part-time and if employers can arrange working times to suit women’s childcare arrangements, then women are more likely to stay for a long period.

There are many other things that help recruit women – we have a gender decoder for job ads and it’s been shown that ads that are “masculine-coded” are more likely to put women off applying. Websites that feature only men deter women from applying to those companies, and often women will only apply for a role where they fit the essential criteria 100%, whereas men will apply if they fit 60% - and get the job. Companies are missing out on talented staff as a result, so WES encourages employers to say, “if you fit three of the following criteria, please apply”. We also want employers to say that they welcome applications from women.

Why is it important for the engineering industry to employ (more) women? 

Women are more holistic, so we look not just at the problem in front of us, but at its wider context. More importantly, the absence of women in engineering creates a lot of problems for women in the rest of their lives. Caroline Criado-Perez has written about this in her book Invisible Women. Crash test dummies are usually modelled on men, meaning women are more likely to be injured than men in traffic collisions; medicines are tested on men and not women, when women respond differently; mobile phones are designed for male hands, so women find it difficult to use them single-handedly, and a recent health app made no mention of periods – something that affects 50% of the population at some point in their lives. Bringing women into engineering brings variety into engineering. I remember Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety from my systems studies – you must have as much variety in your organisation as the population you serve.

Our industry survey asked if 'enough is being done to attract women into engineering'? The results this year or almost identical to last year. However, fewer people (28% compared to 22%) believe Government and business need to be doing more - why do you think that is? 

I think that the campaigns to get more women into engineering have been more visible and there may be a sense that the “job is done”. However, it takes years to build a pipeline of women in engineering and we must keep pushing.

 When I went to university in the late 1980s, there would be one or two women studying for an engineering degree. These women are just now beginning to take senior roles because it takes up to 30 years to get to the right stage in a career – we have just seen Air Marshall Susan Gray become the highest ranked woman in the military ever. And if women took career breaks it will take a little longer. So, we are seeing a few women reaching the top of engineering, with more women coming through below. It’s still not enough, barely 12% of all engineers are women, so we need to keep attracting women into engineering.

We also asked 'What do you think needs to be done to encourage more women to consider manufacturing or engineering as a career?' One of the options was 'no more needs to be done'. Last year, 7% of respondents opted for this. This year, 54% had. Why do think that's the case? 

For similar reasons as above. There is a greater focus on gender pay gaps, on women in the workplace, and now that women are becoming more visible through campaigns such as “#MeToo” there is likely a backlash. Men are having to reconsider their workplace behaviour and it’s easier to say they don’t want any more women than to change the culture.

What do women bring to engineering that's different to men?

Women bring collaboration and teamwork, attention to detail and a willingness to ask questions and possibly fail. If engineers don’t make mistakes, they don’t make anything, and I think women are much more likely to say, well, that didn’t work, let’s try something else, whereas men might be less inclined to admit they got something wrong.

Engineering is much more collaborative now and we are finding that women succeed in newer fields such as environmental engineering and where more than one area of engineering overlap, e.g. Mechatronics – electronics in mechanical vehicles. A good friend of mine has just set up her own company and her expertise is in mechanical, aerospace and chemical engineering, which means she can provide a great deal for her customers.

What’s your personal experience of being a female engineer at Rolls Royce?

I wasn’t an engineer at Rolls-Royce, I was an adviser on lobbying government to support the trade unions at Rolls-Royce. I used my systems engineering background to devise a strategy with the government to get three new factories built in the UK and secure 800 jobs.

Did your gender create obstacles that weren’t there for male colleagues?

Well, having to go outside the building across a site road to another building for the loo was an experience! I don’t think it’s my gender that created obstacles, I think that obstacles are there for women because men don’t encounter the same experiences and don’t think about it.

I’ve spent my life among men. I have three brothers, and there are only 3.5 years between all four of us. I’ve worked in male-dominated industries like IT, politics and engineering all my life, so I’m used to hitting obstacles. I was a Board Member of the East Midlands Regional Development Board in charge of millions of pounds of public money, surrounded by very powerful Council Leaders and leaders of industry (some of them women) and I was asked why I wasn’t more recognised. In the course of the discussion that followed, a man commented, “it’s because good men get promoted and good women get side-lined”. I have found that to be the case, so I’ve generally just found a way round it.

It has been very difficult at times, though, and not every woman wants to be a trailblazer or a role model, they just want to do their job. At the time it didn’t feel like trailblazing or role modelling, but it seems I did do that. This led to quite a patchy CV, so it was important that I construct a narrative that explained my progression. Men often just have a logical career progression which is easily explained. 

What advice would you pass onto young women engineers just entering the profession?

It’s a great field. If you like problem-solving and working on your initiative, it’s a great career and you’ll never be bored. Build you network, because you never know when contacts from years ago will be useful in the future. Join WES as a Student or Apprentice and maintain your membership because we provide a great network from early career to retirement. Get your Chartership because it shows that you have the expertise necessary to do your job and will get you respected. Apply for jobs you want even if you don’t think you can do them. Pursue every opportunity you get, don’t take no for an answer and follow your curiosity. The field of engineering is changing, and you want to be at the cutting edge.

Every year the age where women first encounter sexism gets higher and for many women I hope they won’t encounter it at all. 

What role can senior, male engineers play in driving gender diversity?

A lot! We instituted a Men As Allies Award in 2017 and we award it to the man who has encouraged women into engineering.

Men have always helped women get into engineering, and some of our very first Associate Members were men. Join WES! Get your company to partner with WES!

Employ more women, it will help your gender pay gap and your need to have more women on your Board.

Change your recruitment process, and if you see a woman on a shortlist, try to make it a conversation rather than an inquisition.

If you see a young woman that you believe can be excellent, then mentor her, promote her to your colleagues, give her opportunities to shine, support her in meetings and don’t let her male colleagues take her credit.

Finally, all this will benefit your bottom line – we know that mixed teams work better than either male or female-dominated teams.

The Engineer Conference takes place 4-5 June at NEC, Birmingham, and is co-located with Advanced Manufacturing, The Engineer Expo and Subcon. Register now for a free visitor pass HERE.

Interview with Dr Nick Hawker - CEO First Light Fusion

Dr Nick Hawker is CEO First Light Fusion. At The Engineer Conference in June, he is presenting ‘Projectile Fusion: A New Approach To Fusion Power’ on 4 June at 13:30. We caught up with him before the show to ask all about his nuclear fusion project and its potential to change the industry. 

Please tell us more about your nuclear fusion project and how this has the potential to change the industry as we know it.

For fusion reactions to occur, the fuel source (involving a pair of hydrogen isotopes) needs to be held in a hot, dense plasma state for a sufficient length of time. There are two approaches to achieving this: magnetic and inertial fusion. In magnetic fusion, magnetic forces combine to hold the plasma in a steady state meaning the fuel is always hot and always reacting. Magnetic fusion has a very low density and must hold the plasma for a long time for the reaction to occur. In inertial fusion, the fuel is heated and compressed with an implosion. The plasma is held together by its own inertia and is highly dense, however unlike magnetic, this state only exists for a fraction of a second. The main challenge has been controlling the enormous complexities involved and finding a configuration that holds the fuel together long enough to return more energy than it consumes.
First Light Fusion is developing a new model for inertial fusion where the plasma is held together for a hundred times longer than mainstream inertial fusion, meaning less density is required and an abundant source of energy is created. The project uses a pulsed power machine, ‘Machine 3’. Per Joule of energy, Machine 3 is 1000x cheaper than the mainstream inertial confinement schemes, such as NIF, which uses lasers to create a target and thus dramatically increases costs.
Therefore, as the demand for fusion energy rises, our innovative model produced from a simple machine has the potential to provide an efficient, safe, abundant source of power that can change the energy landscape forever.

What are the challenges associated with creating commercial fusion?

The primary challenge is gaining enough equity to maintain the project, particularly a private company like ourself. There is also the challenge of having enough money to fund the core technology alongside the fusion reactor, something many of our competitors are doing.
First Light Fusion is well funded backed by private equity rather than government money, meaning we can be more rapid in our development and more agile. Furthermore, we plan to partner with world-class engineering companies who can build the fusion reactor while we commercialise our intellectual property by supplying the ‘science bit’. We therefore have the financial foundations to prosper commercially as our company develops.

What are the future benefits of the work you are doing? 

Our fusion project, if successful, will meet the exponentially-rising demand for electricity over the coming decades. It is doubtful that the solar, wind and battery growth will meet the IPCC’s target of net zero emissions by 2050, meaning a significant scientific breakthrough is required. If successful, we can create an abundant, efficient source of energy which is well-financed and commercially viable. At a time when more than one billion people have no access to electricity, our vision is a world where fusion energy, together with existing renewable technologies, brings light into every home. We have every confidence that First Light Fusion can meet this challenge. 

What are you most looking forward to at The Engineer Expo, Subcon and Advanced Manufacturing this summer? 

We are looking forward to meeting the best suppliers, latest innovations and leading practical advisers which will help build new partnerships moving forward. Clearly, partnerships are crucial to our business, particularly when finding an engineering company capable of building a fusion reactor. The Engineering Conference will provide the perfect opportunity to achieve this. Additionally, the broad sector expertise present at the conference will be invaluable for us and will provide an opportunity to exchange experiences and learn. 

What would you put into Engineering Room 101? 

I would put ‘minimum viable product’ into engineering room 101. Smart phones are some of the most incredible bits of hardware every produced, but the software is often sorely lacking. In the name of ‘Agile’ developers rush to get their product out there half-conceptualised, half-implemented and buggy, and there is an entire language and culture developed to justify this. To paraphrase my favourite webcomic, there is no programming language that can clarify your intentions.

The Engineer Conference takes place 4-5 June at NEC, Birmingham, and is co-located with Advanced Manufacturing, The Engineer Expo and Subcon. Register now for a free visitor pass HERE.

GUEST BLOG: Stainless Steel vs Aluminium

Although stainless steel and aluminium might look similar, there are a lot of key differences between the two materials. In this blog post, we cover just a few of these to explain how the two materials compare. If you’d rather learn by video or don’t have time to read through this blog post, then you’re in luck! We’ve also created a quick, 60-second guide as a YouTube video right here https://youtu.be/ETwkW3odY1I

Weight

Stainless Steel is typically 2.5 x denser than Aluminium, therefore making it the heavier material. Due to Aluminium’s lightweight properties it is often favoured in the aerospace industry.

Strength

Compared to Aluminium, Stainless Steel is stronger due to a higher tensile strength… However, Aluminium is more ductile.

Tensile Strength definition: the resistance of a material to breaking under tension.
Ductile definition: Ductility is a physical property of a material associated with the ability to be hammered thin or stretched into wire without breaking.

Corrosion Resistance

Stainless Steel has a multitude of differing grades in both Austenitic and Ferritic, offering different levels of corrosion resistance to suit any application. If Stainless Steel does rust, it can be scrubbed away and the chromium shield will renew itself. Aluminium has a thin layer of Aluminium Oxide, which protects the material from rusting. However, this does not protect the Aluminium from any other forms of corrosion.

Heat Resistance

Stainless Steel can be used at much higher temperatures than Aluminium. Aluminium can become very soft above around 400° Celsius.  

Welding

Stainless Steel is much easier and quicker to weld compared to Aluminium. This is because Stainless Steel shrinks less upon solidification and expands less when heated.

Cost

Aluminium is typically cheaper than Stainless Steel. However, both are recyclable materials.

This post was created by the UKF Group, which supplies a large range of both stainless steel and aluminium products, supporting customers through every stage of their projects. They will be exhibiting at Subcon at the NEC in June. Register for a free visitor pass now - www.subconshow.co.uk/register

GUEST BLOG: What is the best approach to warehouse management? Automation!

Automated warehouse management systems are designed to overcome some limitations of conventional systems by maximizing storage capacity in terms of efficiency, speed, space, precision and operating costs.

The main automatic warehouse management systems include:

Stacker crane automatic warehouse

In a stacker crane automatic warehouse, pallets are stored and handled by means of stacker cranes, and these operations are efficiently managed by means of the central WMS IT system.

The structure may be prefabricated or free-standing, can be very tall and is able to manage a large number of product codes.

The main benefits of stacker crane warehouses compared to conventional systems are:

• Picking process speed: the goods are brought to the operator, reducing order fulfillment times
• Space optimization: handling aisles are reduced to a minimum
• High selectivity and high density
• More control of products in store
• Low operating costs

This type of automated warehouse provides a clear improvement in terms of storage efficiency and operating costs, although the initial investment is high.

Vertical lift module automatic warehouse

Vertical buffer module, or Vertical Lift Module (VLM) automatic warehouses are leading-edge, compact automated storage structures which can be perfectly integrated with production processes and internal ERP systems.

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of a vertical automatic warehouse is the saving in floor space, which may be as high as 90%.

Compared to conventional models, management with a VLM also provides a sharp improvement in safety, speed and inventory precision, cutting times, costs and errors.

In other words, this is a real revolution in efficiency, the spread of which is perhaps only hampered by lack of awareness of the results and potentials of this particular automatic management model.

Those who are worried about having to stop or slow down production because they view automatic systems as complex and therefore think lengthy assembly times are required have no cause for concern. The installation times for a vertical warehouse are very similar to those for conventional static solutions and the transition to automatic operation can also take place gradually.

The idea that automatic vertical warehouses cost a lot more than conventional solutions is another of the common misconceptions about automatic warehouses. The investment is definitely not unaffordable and a rapid ROI is guaranteed. In Italy, the option of “Hyper and Super Amortization” for tax purposes under the Industry 4.0 scheme makes the transition to automatic warehouse management even more financially attractive.

In other words, there are many reasons for investing in an automatic vertical warehouse.
Now let’s take a look at the differences between them and stacker crane warehouses.

Difference between stacker crane and vertical warehouses

The first difference between stacker crane and automatic vertical warehouses is that the latter do not need aisles for transporting goods, and all the space available is used for storage.

What’s more, any type of goods can be stored in a vertical warehouse, from heavy, bulky products to small parts, without the limitations imposed by pallets.

The automated system guarantees the optimization of spaces between trays, improving storage efficacy.

Improving stock management, increasing warehouse security, speeding up inventories.These and many more are the advantages of vertical warehouses.

But how much do you really know about them?

Do you know what the main advantages of automatic vertical warehouses are?

• Saving time during picking and storage operations
• Saving 90% of floor space
• Goods are completely secure and all access to stock is tracked
• Safety and improved working conditions
  

Do you know how they work? Test yourself!

Answer these 5 questions and find out how much you know about this new logistics solution.

Join the quiz now!

https://www.modula.eu/blog/en/how-much-do-you-know-about-vertical-warehouses/

This post was written by Alice Bellelli, Modula Marketing Mananger at Modula S.P.A. Modula S.P.A is exhibiting at Subcon 4-6 June 2019 - register now for free at www.subconshow.co.uk/register

The next generation: UK engineering start-ups

By Jon Excell, editor, The Engineer and Launchpad chair

Engineering remains a huge part of the UK economy: contributing about 23% of the UK turnover and employing just under one in five people in the UK workforce.

There are many challenges to maintaining, and hopefully improving, on this formula (not least finding a workable solution to the Brexit conundrum) but one vital piece of the puzzle is ensuring that the engineering wealth-generators of tomorrow are able to grow and prosper.

The UK doesn’t have a great track record in this regard. But there are positive signs that things are changing.  In early 2018, research by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub suggested strongly that the UK no longer lags behind the USA when it comes to engineering start-ups.  

Building on this – however - is vital, and there are a number of ways that industry, academia, government and the media can help.  

Firstly, it’s time to end the increasingly outdated distinction between engineering and ‘technology’. If the sector is to cast its net wide, tap into the opportunities presented by the blurring boundaries between once distinct area and attract fresh talent, it must address perceptions that it stands apart from other industries.

Secondly, the broader UK engineering community also needs to be encouraged to become less risk averse. Addressing this is perhaps doubly-difficult in the uncertain climate created by Brexit, but it’s vital that fledgling firms are given the confidence to take those first bold steps, and that larger companies are emboldened to help them on their way.

And finally, despite UK industry’s strong track record of collaborating with the academic research base, there is still more that can be done to tap into this source of innovation. Indeed, according to latest research carried out by The Engineer’s sister event Subcon just 3 per cent of engineering businesses collaborate with academia to drive innovation.

In our own small effort to help address this, The Engineer is pleased to support Subcon’s Launchpad initiative, which will give eight British engineering start-ups a free platform to share their innovations with thousands of senior industry decision makers.

Each of the eight start-ups will also be entered into the inaugural Launchpad Awards, the winner of which will receive a £10,000 package including a free stand on the main floor at Subcon 2020 as well PR and marketing support.

Qualifying businesses must be under three years old with a product or service that relates to engineering and/or manufacturing. 

To enter and to find out more visit:  https://www.subconshow.co.uk/exhibit/launchpad-launchpad-awards 

Please note, entries close this week!