Breakthrough Magazine Issue 2

breakthrough INNOVATION IN ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING

Spring 2017

It’s payback time!

A sound networking idea

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ISSN 2514-149X

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Renewable energy storage with a trick up its sleeve

£5.99

The Tech Talk Show broadcast live every Thursday and available as a weekly podcast at www.techtalkshow.co.uk

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Collaborate and listen

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Collaboration shouldn’t be considered a dirty word according to Breakthrough magazine’s Managing Editor, Suzanne Callander.

predict that 2017 will herald the era of collaboration. Everywhere you turn, people and organisations are at it. Even robots are getting in on the act with many new industrial offerings breaking free from their cages having been designed to work safely and collaboratively alongside humans. Just Google ABB’s YuMi or FANUC’s CR-35iA and take a look for yourself.

There are many more out there, these are just the ones that I have met.

The rapid and dramatic changes to the business landscape, being brought about by global megatrends trends such as increasing consumer demand for more personalised products, has even resulted in collaborations between some huge multinationals who, traditionally, have been much happier to work alone. They have identified a need to work together to meet the demands of their end-users, and to expand their traditional boundaries and knowledge base. This change in attitude does not always come naturally. At a recent agri-food industry forum, hosted by Rothamsted Centre for Research and Enterprise (RoCRI), Adrian Percy, head of research and development at Bayer Crop Science, spoke about the benefits and challenges

of open innovation. He said: “It is a big mindset change.

Open innovation is being driven by an explosion in science.

We are moving from delivering products to delivering systems and solutions to growers, so there is more need to work with other businesses.”

As we travel around the country meeting the business people featured in Breakthrough we see many examples to demonstrate the benefits that collaboration with complementary companies and people can offer a project. It can bring a much broader set of skills and experiences to bear on your project and can help drive it forward from the first seeds of an idea through to its use in the real world. So, do keep talking to each other, working in a collaborative environment might just help you overcome a problem that has been occupying your mind for too long.

I hope that you enjoy this issue of Breakthrough.

If you think your business journey might inspire others please do get in touch, we would love to talk to you about your experiences, challenges and successes and maybe you could feature in a future issue.

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Telephone: 01233 211 538 If you know of any innovations you think should be featured please contact Paul Dunn at paul@breakthroughpress.co.uk

Publisher Sue Nelson

Managing Editor Suzanne Callander Editor Chris Callander

Publication Manager Paul Dunn Production G and C Media Ltd

Sponsored by

breakthrough funding

The content of Breakthrough magazine does not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or publishers. The publishers accept no legal responsibility for loss arising from information in this publication and do not endorse any products or processes mentioned within it. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system without the publisher’s written consent. Š Breakthrough Press.

All rights reserved.

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Contents

Breakthrough magazine is published quarterly by: Breakthrough Press Breakthrough Innovation Hub 13 The Glenmore Centre Moat Way Ashford TN24 0TL

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Squaring the circle A fresh perspective is set to save the construction sector £320 million a year

6 Boxing clever When the world around you changes you have to change with it

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Risky business Compliance can support your profit ambitions

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Powering the future Renewable energy storage with a trick up its sleeve

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Now that’s a sound idea Networks can talk more easily with sound

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Life in the fast lane There will always be a place for companies that innovate

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Playing a weighting game F1 engine designers are using 3D printing in an entirely new way

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A winner is a dreamer who never gives up Mike James shows he has staying power

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Creativity: The father of invention?

If necessity is the mother, then surely creativity is the father

76 Poetry in motion Creating an electric motorcycle is not an easy ride

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Bright sparks Of course you need a spark plug to make graphene

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Of sound mind The world of avionics powers an audio revolution

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Under pressure We find out how a pressure testing business is expanding

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Are you ready for a heating revolution Mainstream off-grid heat and power moves a step closer

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The French connection

90 Let’s knock some sense into climate change

A partnership built on lateral innovation

How would you reduce the UK’s carbon footprint by more than 5%?

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Thousands of manufacturing and engineering businesses are missing out

Test your theories and you might just be surprised

It’s payback time

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History in the making Money for old rope, used in new applications

Beating the daily grind

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Do android farmers dream of electric sheep?

Will we soon be seeing robots down on the farm?

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Adapt or die A new way of working means businesses need to adapt to attract the best new talent

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BOXING CLEVER How many times have you missed a parcel delivery because you nipped out for a moment, or had to change your plans to be in when the delivery was scheduled? If you find this as frustrating as we do, the answer to your prayers might just be coming from a 140-year old lock manufacturer, as we found out when we spoke to Emmanuel Charbonnel, Managing Director at DAD UK.

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riginally from France, DAD UK, is part of the Decayeux group which started life as a lock manufacturer in 1872. The skills in the Vimeu region of France—where Decayeux is still based—date back to the time of the Franco-Spanish war. During the winters, when the fighting would die down, the Spanish soldiers would take the opportunity to make repairs to their armour. To do this, Spanish artisans, with the necessary metalworking skills, would come to the area to carry out the work. Some of these craftsmen never went home, instead settling in the region and finding new outlets for their metal working skills. Because these craftsmen needed to use their abilities to earn a living, a locksmithing industry emerged.

Fast forward over onehundred years, and the region had already gained a strong reputation throughout France

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for the quality of its locks when Antoine and Désiré Decayeux launched their business.

Today, the group has evolved into a global player in the security mailbox sector. DAD UK was formed in 1996 to strengthen its presence in the UK and enhance links with the company’s English-speaking customer base.

In the 1950s, the business in France started to expand its offering beyond lock making and became one of the first businesses to enter the mailbox production market.

Things took off in the sector

In France, the postman has a master key to every box on his, or her, round

in the 1970s, when the French Government introduced a law that required every new build property to have a locking post box outside the property.

In France, the postman has a master key to every box on his, or her, round. These keys are increasingly moving to electronic formats, and new properties have to buy their boxes from designated suppliers. So, the postman is not just pushing envelopes through a slot; they can open a box and put your items inside it. With hindsight, the French Government's move seems brilliant in light of the massive growth in home delivery over recent years.

Decayeux was perfectly placed and soon became the leading supplier of mailboxes in France. Today the group manufactures over 1.2 million boxes per year.

Clearly, in the UK, DAD doesn’t benefit from similar

legislation. But the market for mailboxes here is growing, fuelled in part by the growth in online retail and also by a resurgence in the construction of multi-occupancy properties.

And so DAD UK’s business is currently split between commercial and residential properties.

The benefits of installing a set of mailboxes in the shared lobby on a multi-occupancy property are clear, where they mean that a postman doesn’t need to visit each door.

However, the company is also seeing increased interest in mailboxes for individual dwellings, and it now has a range that combines mailboxes with doors—both with extremely high levels of security. This range has been further extended to the multioccupancy market with the introduction of access control technology. For architects and home builders particularly,

The Police were behind the project due to the amount of mail theft they have to deal with being able to have these three components in a single product has proved to be a real benefit, as it eliminates any compatibility issues between independently produced components and elements.

Since the group started manufacturing mailboxes, back in the 1950s, manufacturing processes have changed significantly. One of the ways this has affected the business is in the finish it can give its products. Traditionally the

mailboxes were single coloured boxes. Today they can be almost any colour and finish that can be imagined and can even be covered with striking images. This ability to be creative is a feature that has appealed to architects and which has seen mailbox systems go from being something that was hidden away in a corner, to becoming an integral, often primary, part of a building's lobby and frontage design.

Bringing the new combined products to market has not been a straightforward journey, though. It has taken five years, from the concept first being discussed to it finally being launched this year. A significant proportion of that time has been taken up by gaining ‘Secured by Design’ accreditation. Being a new product category, a standard didn’t previously exist.

And so the DAD team had

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to work with the standards body and the Police service to create one. The Police service was very much behind the project due to the amount of mail theft they have to deal with—particularly in cities where mail has become a target for organised gangs. It is now seen as a valuable target for thieves as, while there are a lot fewer letters being sent through the postal system today, the proportion of sensitive mail is significantly higher than it was a few years ago.

The impact of online retail While the domestic and commercial property mailbox sectors both remain healthy, new markets and applications are offering DAD UK new opportunities for growth.

The online shopping boom mentioned earlier is very much at the forefront of this potential.

To provide a solution for this growing trend, DAD UK has developed an electronic locker system which is ideal for installations where many people may want occasional access and which is proving hugely popular on many modern University campuses.

When a shopper places an online order, in the delivery instructions they give the locker site’s details and a unique code. When the delivery driver arrives at the locker site, they key in the code on a touch screen. They can then choose a locker of an appropriate size for the parcel from the bank available. They place the parcel in the locker, close it securely, and away they go. Once the parcel is delivered, the locker system sends the shopper a notification that the parcel has arrived, along with a new code.

The buyer comes to the locker site, enters their code and can retrieve the parcel.

The system has proven to be extremely popular, and the technology is being transferred

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to a new product for individual homeowners that DAD UK is calling the Connected Box. Again, delivery drivers are supplied with a unique code and once the parcel is delivered a smartphone app alerts the homeowner to its arrival.

Emmanuel sees the technology having uses beyond simply managing parcel deliveries and believes they will find applications as drop-off points for things being leant to friends and neighbours, for example.

Or, when incorporated into refrigerated boxes, the solution could eliminate the need to wait in for online food shopping deliveries to arrive.

A good example of how else the technology is being utilised can be demonstrated by a project the DAD UK team are currently working on with a pharmacy chain. When people go to the chemist to pick up a prescription they have to queue. The pharmacy company was looking for ways to eliminate this need to queue and approached DAD UK. Together they are developing the Connected Box technology to meet this need.

When a prescription is ready, it is placed in a locker system

The lesson from the DAD UK story is adapt or die.

at the chemist, and a text is sent to the customer with a unique code. They can then come to the chemist when they are ready, enter the code and the locker containing their prescription will open.

This project is just one example of how the technology is being applied, with many more in other stages of development.

Adapt or die The lesson from the Decayeux and DAD UK story is adapt or die. If the group had simply stuck to making locks, it would have been a very different business today. And the outlook for the company would be bleak as the days of the mechanical lock are clearly numbered. However, the company has ensured the business thrives through a combination of evolving its products—often pre-empting changes in demand—and also identifying new ways to apply its technology offering.

DAD UK Ltd dadgroup.co.uk

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RISKY BUSINESS Mark Swain’s consultancy career path could be considered typical.

However, it was an altogether different journey that led to him developing a methodology that is unique in his field and which has seen his business grow from a one-man-band consultancy to a company with a team of 11 and a client base that stretches across the world.

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ark initially trained as an architect, specialising in design safety. Within this function, he would be responsible for assessing the plan for a building and anticipating the critical elements, before, during and after the build phase. For example, this might be looking at a fabulous glass atrium and identifying the implications around its installation and then ongoing maintenance and cleaning. Architects are often focussed on handing over a

building that looks great, but not necessarily assessing the human and financial costs of the ongoing maintenance.

If that Atrium costs several thousand to clean, and it needs to be done every few months, that cost should be factored into the plans for the build. Not doing so could encourage contractors to take unacceptable safety risks.

As luck would have it, at the time Mark was completing his studies, new EU legislation was coming in around construction

design and management.

When he looked into it in more detail, Mark realised that this legislation would require a new role to coordinate compliance with the new legislation—and that this matched the skills he was already developing. So, in the final year of his architectural degree, Mark took it upon himself to do additional training as a safety professional, and then he wrote his thesis on designing for health and safety in the same year that the new legislation became law.

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Once graduated, Mark found himself in demand thanks to his highly relevant skills, and he was soon working for a major construction firm. Within that role, he worked to set up a consultancy division that enabled his employers to sell widely demanded design safety skills and services to other construction firms.

Realising this was something Mark could do just as easily on his own, he left the construction business and set up his own consultancy.

Mark had intended to stay as a one man band consultant; he was enjoying the work and the lifestyle it gave him. That was until he was approached by a company keen to buy his consultancy firm and of course his skills. Thankfully, his accountant managed to talk him out of it by explaining how the potential buyer would use

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The pair went on a year-long adventure, cycling from Ireland to Japan his skills to grow a business, a business that the buyer owned.

When Mark realised he could do that himself while retaining ownership of the business he decided to give it a go and Systems2 Consulting (S2C) was born. But, it wasn’t simply a case of taking a leap of faith.

A Japanese adventure Fulfilling a promise he had made to his son many years before, the pair went on a year-long adventure, cycling

from Ireland to Japan. It's not something you do on a whim and Mark had been planning the trip for eight years. But, the time scheduled for the trip coincided with the opportunity Mark had to move his business to the next level. Mark needed to find someone with the right vision and enthusiasm to run the company in his absence.

When he met Colin Bowyer, a Management Trainer with experience in Compliance Management, Mark knew he had found someone with whom he could share his business journey. Colin came on board as Managing Director and began the process of growing the business as Mark set off on his adventure of a lifetime.

A novel approach The areas of health and safety that S2C is involved in are not simply about ensuring staff

don't trip over an extension lead, or that their chair is at the correct height. It covers compliance in a much broader sense. Mark and his team help businesses to look at how they take care of risk in the context of their core commercial interests—about how they remain compliant with the laws that apply to the work they are carrying out while at the same time benefiting from improved operational efficiency.

Often, the solution is seen as being about adopting complicated procedure manuals and bolting them on to the work that is being done; and many health and safety consultancies drive this belief. The approach S2C take is much more focused on how a business can integrate systems that take care of risk into general business practice. Health and safety compliance is often seen

as a necessary evil with cost implications. Mark and his team have turned that idea on its head, looking instead at how compliance can support the achievement of profits. Mark believes that if you manage risk well, then it will be business beneficial; the company will operate more effectively.

It is important to understand that this approach is not cutting corners, far from it.

Modern Health and Safety is about ensuring good practice is followed, not that a series of large folders, full of systems and processes, have been drawn up to protect employers from staff who don't follow them. It is a common misconception that putting the right documentation and procedures in place will give you compliance with health and safety law. The reverse can be true. If what happens for

real does not fully reflect the documentation and procedures put in place, then a breach of the law is very easy for the enforcing authorities to prove.

For Mark and the team, it's obvious; it's common sense to approach managing health and safety risk in this way. So much so that he didn't expect to be unique in taking the approach for long after they started the business. But to his constant surprise, the health and safety consultancy market seems hellbent on continuing to operate in the traditional manner. And, all the while S2C is reaping the rewards Mark and his business partners are not planning to put too much effort into telling them where they are going wrong!

When Mark returned from his Japanese adventure, he was delighted to find that his new partner, Colin, had capitalised on his initial ideas

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Mark brought back what he thought was a groundbreaking idea and the business had grown significantly in its first year.

Hoping to continue that growth, Mark had brought back with him what he believed was a ground-breaking idea. While away, he had been able to take the time to think about the business from a much broader perspective. Considering their largest client—a multinational telecoms giant—he realised that much of the work being undertaken by S2C was reactive.

This client was conducting significant amounts of construction work across the MEA region, building telecoms infrastructure on behalf of other local telecoms companies. The work would be carried out by local contractors, but if there was ever a serious accident, it was the client’s name that would be associated with it.

This situation was obviously not good for the client’s reputation, let alone the safety of its contractors.

Mark and his team had been employed to work with the client’s contractors to embed safety management procedures across all the areas the client was working in, so they were ready to respond to highly lucrative tenders issued by the local network providers.

However, as competition grew for his client, what had been a proactive approach to working with their local contractors had turned into a reactive approach to reducing costs. A planned program of activity transformed into a series of short-notice calls to go and work with a local construction firm and ensure

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they passed a safety audit that was being carried out by the local network provider—often with just a few weeks to turn the project around.

Mark’s idea was based on his approach to risk assessment— what was needed in these situations was the best solution that could be delivered within the time constraints.

From that understanding, Mark sketched out a methodology that gave the client the best framework possible—within a month. It was a multi-stage program that included identifying what was in place already, carrying out a cultural audit to understand the local dynamics that would affect the project, liaison with subcontractors to drive their compliance and a series of audits and implementation stages. In its context, it was quite simple and when you realise that an in-house safety manager would take anything up to three years to get to a similar position it was amazingly fast.

The result wouldn't be perfect, but Mark was confident that he and his team could put enough in place within a month to be able to go to the safety audit and demonstrate that the framework was in place and embedded within the culture of the workforce. Their approach could show that the construction firm's staff had an understanding of the framework and could be tested on it; and that there was a template ready for the project they were tendering for.

Mark knew it would work because he had been on the other side of the fence.

He was aware of what the organisation issuing the tender was looking for. The contractor wasn't expected to have the completed compliance systems in place, but it was necessary to demonstrate they knew what was required and that the

compliance system could be implemented as soon as it was needed.

Mark and Colin christened the idea the Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) and took it to their client's head of safety.

They loved it. The RDP solved a massive problem for the client. It was simple, it was extremely cost effective, it was easily communicated to the local construction business and the idea that it enabled Mark's client to win a contract within a month was a huge advantage.

S2C started to use the RDP for their client in Ghana where it worked amazingly well. Then it was extended to work their client was carrying out in Kenya and Mozambique and then across the world. The practice of starting the Program with a cultural audit meant precious time wasn't wasted studying local law, and so the RDP was seamlessly transferable to almost any country and jurisdiction in the World. It worked, and Mark's client was winning the tenders they went after.

The RDP has been a huge success for S2C too. It won the company a host of new clients and was adapted to a range of new industries and applications.

It was the cornerstone of the emerging business that fuelled its growth to the 11 person company it is today, by bringing the same philosophy to other areas including facilities management and business continuity.

So next time you are struggling to come up with an idea to crack that tough problem, perhaps it might be an idea to take some time off to think the problem through.

Maybe you can take a bike ride to gather your thoughts. It doesn’t have to take a year.

Systems2 Consulting www.s2-c.com

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POWERING THE FUTURE

On the surface, it’s clear to see that Powervault offers a product that can overcome a substantial barrier to the adoption of renewable energy for home power generation. But delve a little deeper, and you soon realise that the technology also has the potential to completely disrupt the national power generation and distribution sector; as Breakthrough magazine discovered.

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owervault was formed by London-based Sustainable Venture Development Partners (SVDP), an organisation that drives the creation and growth of businesses with the potential to generate revenue through low energy or low carbon solutions. In less than six years, SVDP has built up an impressive track record. It has formed 15 businesses that have collectively raised over £250 million of equity investment. It is also credited with taking the first crowdfunded business to exit, when SVDP-backed business, E-Car Club, was sold to Europcar in 2015.

Powervault exists because renewable energy sources are necessary to decarbonise energy systems and to provide a long-term, sustainable, way to meet energy needs.

Traditionally, the downside to solar, wind

and other renewable sources is that they are intermittent. To offer a viable alternative, the energy they create needs to be stored, so it is available whenever it is required. No matter how well-convinced consumers are of the merits of renewable energy, they won't adopt it if they can't boil a kettle after dark when it isn’t windy!

This intermittency problem has been one of the biggest barriers to renewable energy in the past; how do we access this new form of energy at any time of the day or night?

The obvious solution is battery technology.

That’s not a new idea. But the technology, and also its price, have meant that battery technology was not viable. Historically it hasn’t been effective or efficient enough, and the price has been prohibitive where mainstream use is concerned.

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So there is a need to make batteries work.

Recognising this, globally there has been an enormous amount of investment, research and innovation in battery technology. As a result, we are now at a stage where the storage of energy, renewable energy, is starting to make real commercial sense.

Powervault’s vision and direction come from the organisation’s Managing Director, Joe Warren.

Before joining Powervault in 2014, Joe amassed more than ten years experience in the smart grid sector where he developed a passion for working in startups and bringing smart grid technologies to market.

Fundamentally, the Powervault is a battery based storage solution. It's roughly the size of a small kitchen appliance and, once connected by a qualified electrician, it can capture and store excess energy produced by the property’s energy generation equipment.

Control technology built into the Powervault tracks power consumption. If you are exporting energy—using less of the renewable energy than you are creating—then the excess is diverted to the batteries until they are fully charged. If, however, it detects that you start importing energy from the grid, then the control technology will start discharging power from the batteries into the home.

The current state of the technology in use today means that, typically, the excess energy stored during the day should cover most of the home's requirements through the overnight period, when renewable power is not being generated.

However, the power output is capped where hi-power items like tumble dryers are concerned, so the stored power is not consumed too quickly.

When these devices are used their power is supplied in part by the Powervault and in part by the grid. This management of the energy drawn from the Powervault system is driven by the technology,

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its capability and the associated costs; the current price of the higher power batteries and inverters, those needed to cover everything, would not merit the energy savings that would be made as a result.

But with the pace of technology development, particularly around batteries, it won’t be long before that requirement changes.

Powervault offers the homeowner other benefits. Backup supply is an example. If there is a power outage on the grid supply, the Powervault will still be able to provide energy to power the property's essential equipment. If required the batteries can also be charged from the grid, storing energy during periods when the tariff is lower such as Economy 7, for use when the cost of grid supplied energy would be higher.

Smartening up the grid These features alone make the Powervault a compelling product. But it's when you look a little deeper that you can see the wider opportunities.

The potential created by the control technology and connectivity comes into play when you join the units together via a network, linking them up so they can talk to control centers, each other and the grid.

It is in this area where Joe’s experience comes to bear; where his vision is taking the Powervault to a new level and giving the business a valuable competitive advantage in a sector that is becoming increasingly competitive. The project is being developed as a piece of smart technology; to be an essential part of the smart home of the not too distant future.

Using a connection to the Powervault head office, individual units installed in user’s homes can be updated, automatically, with new software and firmware. It is also possible for the unit to be monitored, and any emerging issues can be addressed proactively rather than after a failure.

The master control system can even adapt the individual unit's controls

based on real-time information. If for example, the weather forecast suggests thick cloud cover the next day, the control centre could adjust a homeowner's Powervault system to store lower cost energy overnight, to minimise the lost advantage from the impending poor weather.

Beyond the benefits created by this direct connectivity, when you connect the Powervault units to each other, across a grid, then a new set of benefits open up.

The first can help meet peak demand. For example, at halftime during a big televised football match, when everyone watching puts their kettle on there will be a spike in demand.

The energy companies need to manage that by supplying more energy very quickly. Currently, this is achieved using costly hydro-electric or diesel generators. But, if there were a network of batteries, located across the country, all connected to the grid, it would be possible to draw on that reserve instead.

Further, the requirement to maintain a steady 50-hertz frequency across the grid is tricky to manage. However, with sensitive batteries in the system, it would be possible to continuously monitor the frequency, providing feedback and even absorbing some of that frequency.

And of course, Powervault units connected to each other—even across the current grid­­—could share or trade energy between each other.

With the trend towards localisation popping up

Connected Powervault units - even across the current grid - could share or trade energy between each other. in an increasing number of sectors, will we one day see a model where each property, or cluster of properties has a dedicated energy generation, storage and distribution system? Will a ‘grid’ even be needed in a few decades time?

For the time being this new technology and the direction it is heading is not a terminal threat to the grid operators. Indeed it offers them several benefits, and isolating the grid providers would remove the platform needed to develop the technology stopping it in its tracks. So for the time being, this exciting new technology will be working in partnership with the current providers and their infrastructure. But it is clear that what we are used to today will change at some stage in the future—it’s just a question of when.

Powervault www.powervault.co.uk

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NOW THAT’S A SOUND IDEA

When we first heard the Chirp technology in action, we were transformed back in time to the dial-up Internet connections of the 90s, and the sounds we heard emanating from our ‘modem’ while waiting patiently to get online. But don’t be fooled into thinking Chirp is simply a rehash of old technology, it’s far from it as Chirp’s CEO, Moran Lerner, explained.

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he technology powering Chirp spun out from a longstanding research project carried out by some of the country's leading acoustic and computer scientists from University College London.

The project was originally conceived to overcome shortcomings in today’s networking technologies. As the Internet of Things (IoT) gathers pace, an increasing number of devices are trying to connect to the Internet and communicate with each other. However the networking technologies in common use today are not compatible with vast swathes of older devices that are still in use. Plus, there are multiple platforms and technologies used to bridge the gap between individual devices and the Internet, and they are often not interoperable or compatible with one another. So, older devices simply aren't up to the job of connecting, and newer devices struggle to talk to each other.

A good example of the interoperability problems can be seen in the payments industry. Many ATMs and till systems still run on Windows XP, sometimes with even older systems connected behind them. They simply cannot talk to growing number of modern technologies to enable seamless mobile transactions. It's a situation that is holding back the industry.

The technologies designed to overcome some

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of these shortcomings, like Bluetooth, work up to a point. But they require installed hardware to operate ruling out many older devices. They also highlight another challenge: friction. Devices that are trying to communicate over Bluetooth need to be connected to each other first. While this need can be overcome by other technologies, like RFID (radio frequency identification) and NFC (near field communication), both have relatively short range capabilities and are not widely available.

And so the Chirp team set about developing a solution to connect disparate platforms and networks seamlessly by pairing them securely.

Explaining the original concept behind Chirp, Moran said: "The Chirp team realised that sound is everywhere, it's the original form of human communication. There are a plethora of devices with speakers and microphones built-in, and they all work on the same, universal, protocol; sound."

There was clearly a gap for a widely compatible, low-friction method for devices to connect to

While on the surface it may look simple, Chirp went through years of research

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each other and to networks. Drawing on this insight, Chirp was designed as a new protocol that can share data between devices that have speakers and microphones, using just sound.

While its conceptual origins do lie in the legacy modem technologies, a key difference is that the Chirp technology transfers data over the air rather than through cables.

While on the surface it may look simple, Chirp went through years of research and four years of intensive market testing with a consumer application for transferring photos, links, music and other media content using just sound.

How to Chirp Any device with a speaker can emit a Chirp and any device with a microphone, and a relatively small amount of processing power, can decode one.

Chirps can be audible or ultrasonic, depending on the equipment or application they are designed for. There are situations where the sound indicating a transfer is an advantage and others where the sound is unwanted, while some speakers and microphones are simply unable to handle the ultrasonic frequencies involved in the inaudible Chirps.

The standard Chirp technology draws on a network application programming interface (API)

A Chirp can be reconstructed with anything up to 25% of its content missing which essentially converts data to a ten character shortcode and an audio protocol which turns a set of characters into a series of tones. This method gives a Chirp a data capacity of 50 bits.

That may not sound like much, but when you consider switching on and off a light takes just one bit, you can see there is a lot you can do with 50.

For transmission, the shortcode is embedded into a string of 20 characters, which has what's known as a 'front door' element at the beginning, to tell the receiving device that the sound is a Chirp. At the end of the string are eight 'ReedSolomon' characters to enable state-of-the-art error correction. This is a technique that is widely used by data technologies including DVDs and satellite communications This error correction was one of the most challenging and critical aspects of the Chirp project. The Chirps have to work in a wide variety of real-world situations and surroundings

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and need to be able to cope with background noise and other disruptions. The Chirp team are pretty tight-lipped when pressed about how they developed the robustness, but they do say it took a lot of work and tackling this challenge was a major part of the four-year development programme that went into Chirp. Once perfected, the error correction meant that a Chirp could be reconstructed with anything up to 25% of its content missing or misheard.

There’s an app available in the Android and iOS app stores—Chirp Share—that demonstrates the technology, it’s simple but does a good job of showing how the technology works. Pop your

Using semi-tone intervals made a Chirp sound more melodic phone into aeroplane mode, and you can marvel as you transfer symbols between your phone and a computer—or indeed another phone running the app. Try it in a room with background noise, and you will see just how robust the technology can be.

The effort that went into developing Chirp was not all under the hood, however. The development team realised how unpleasant noises produced by the old modem technology could be. So they engineered their sounds to be more pleasing to the ear by using semitone intervals which made a Chirp sound more melodic. There were no engineering benefits to this, but the focus on aesthetics made a significant difference to the experience of the audible Chirps.

The benefits of Chirp-ing The technology isn’t looking to replace networks; rather it has been designed to act as a universal interface—the last, or first, three feet of the connection between a device and its destination, which could be another device, system, network or the Internet.

What it does offer are many other advantages.

Universal access is a significant benefit and helps to overcome the issues of enabling a broad range of new and legacy devices to communicate.

There is also a lack of friction in the Chirp solution. Other technologies, like Bluetooth for example, need to be joined before they can communicate; Chirp doesn't. The sound-based approach doesn't suffer from contention issues either. These are problems experienced when too many devices are trying to access a network.

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The game has around 200 million children playing it worldwide And data transfer through a Chirp can give users a far greater level of anonymity, as the lack of requirement for devices to formally join, means that no identifying information needs to be transferred for a Chirp to work.

Initially, the technology was used to launch a consumer-focused app—one that enabled people to share anything from pictures to Mp3s, across a range of devices. However, when Moran joined the team, he realised that commercialising the technology as a business-to-consumer tool would be tough. Many had tried before, and only a few survived. So the direction of the business changed to focus on business-tobusiness applications, where Chirp technology is embedded directly into customer’s products, regardless of the platform used.

In the business-to-business space the applications are endless, but, the team are approaching it along two primary paths.

They work with partners on bespoke projects and implementations of the technology. A

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practical example of this approach has been work with the digital games company Activision.

Skylanders, one of Activision's flagship games, is a character-based console game aimed at the under-tens. Within the game, players create their own unique characters, and as part of the game's ecosystem, they are encouraged to share them.

The game has around 200 million children playing it worldwide. However, due to their young average age, Activision established that a significant majority of players wouldn't be able to access data networks on their mobile devices.

This barrier to communication constrained the ability to share characters and limited this function and its potential to support the game’s growth.

Sound was the perfect solution. It enabled players to transfer characters from the screen to their mobile devices without the need for any dedicated connection, complicated user accounts or data requirements. Once on the child’s mobile device—a tablet perhaps—they could then easily use another Chirp to share their character with a friend.

However, in the Activision example, 50 bits of data wasn't enough, so the Chirp team adapted the technology to be able to transfer enough data to represent the character using a custom built 1.2Kbit protocol. As a result, the technology is

being used by millions of kids to enhance their enjoyment of Skylanders.

There was also an added benefit that the team didn't initially anticipate. The kids quickly realised they could share screencasts of themselves sharing their characters via Youtube, and then other users, anywhere in the world, could access the Chirp, and the character, by watching the video and capturing the Chirp. This unintended consequence took character sharing from something that was done between friends to a craze with global reach.

Moran and the team also want Chirp to be accessible, so the other path the company is following has seen it release a series of software development kits (SDKs), which enable the Chirp technology to be used with a range of software, devices and platforms that might otherwise be interoperable with the other. Technology and software developers can access the SDKs and integrate Chirp technology into their projects. As an example, the team have used a Raspberry Pi—a widely available, low-cost, programmable board—to receive Chirps and use them to control a series of colour adjustable lights.

It is a simple but effective way of showing the technology in action. But some of the other realworld applications the team have worked on have far more significant benefits.

For example, in India Chirp has worked with a bus ticketing company, Shuttl, to enable a payment and ticketing solution. Mobiles are prolific in India, but the majority are old with basic technical capabilities. The ticketing system in the region requires tickets to be purchased in advance of travel and then authorised by the bus driver. To enable electronic ticket sales a method for them to be authorised electronically was needed too. However, connecting to the network on a bus is simply too slow and not possible for every passenger. QR codes were tried but also suffered from issues with device compatibility. So, Shuttl was looking for an off-line solution, with broad compatibility, and Chirp fitted the brief.

Now, millions of customers board the bus and play a Chirp from their phone; the sound tells the driver they have a ticket for travel and the ticket details are recorded.

As well as enabling the move to electronic ticket sales, the solution has significantly reduced the time it takes to get passengers on board.

Alongside applications in consumer

Millions of customers board the bus and play a Chirp from their phone

Embedded Chirp technology enables sound to be used to give commands to robots technologies, the fast growing Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) space is seen as having a significant scope for the technology too.

There is currently an exponential growth in IIoT and related services, which means that the increase in complexity of these systems—as they have to be continuously available and highly faulttolerant—is hyper-exponential. Using sound as a complementary technology offers advantages through its simplicity, as other technologies become increasingly more complex.

If a device that may or may not otherwise be connected to a network, is broadcasting data via Chirp technology, it doesn't matter what else is going on. The network could be down, the data centre could even be on fire, but if a technician is within earshot, they can still access the data being broadcast.

There are other advantages in IIoT applications.

Chirp technology is platform-independent, so the cost of joining discrete networks and systems with Chirp can be far less than other options. And sound does not cause, or suffer, from issues that can affect radio-based networks.

This last advantage is why Chirp was asked if it could help with data capture in a nuclear facility.

These sites are strictly regulated on safety grounds and introducing wifi technology is a not an option.

Sound, however, is inert. So Chirp was able to implement its system, ultrasound in this instance, and allow engineers to access data from sensors right across the site. As a result, an enormous amount of time has been saved on tasks that, traditionally, need to be carried out manually.

The team is also working with several major manufacturers of industrial robotics. Embedded Chirp technology enables sound to be used as a method to give commands to the robots. The robots can also communicate with each other or share diagnostic information, and this can be done quickly and safely in radio-sensitive environments.

The more you consider the possible applications, the more you realise that a technology that was all but written off at the dawn of the broadband era may never have been more relevant. Where else could this be the case? Is anyone up for resurrecting the fax or Telex?

Chirp www.chirp.io breakthrough, Spring 2017

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LIFE IN THE FAST LANE When Minnitron was formed in 1962, by an inventor who developed a new process for manufacturing printed circuit boards, little did its founder know that over 50 years later the business would be working with another inventor, pioneering a new technology set to change manufacturing— 3D printing. We met Minnitron’s current Managing Director and third generation head of the business, Paul Goodfellow, to find out more.

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aul’s grandfather, George, was an inventor, an innovator with an interest in electronics through a love of radio-controlled vehicles. As all inventors do, he had a shed. In the shed, he’d work on projects linked to his passion for radio controlled boats and aeroplanes.

At the time, Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) were not widely used, and one company held the patents for the processes used to manufacture them.

Defending its patents, that company came down hard on anyone who tried to copy its methods.

So, for the projects he was working on, George needed to identify alternative ways of making the PCBs. “I’m not sure if it was intentional,” Paul explained.

“But my grandfather managed to get around the patent issues.

He developed new processes that were not covered by them.”

Initially, it was primarily just a hobby. George was helping out friends and other radio control enthusiasts and enjoying what he was doing. Then, as more and more people came to him, he began to realise there was a business opportunity in what he was doing.

Over the next few years, Minnitron was established, and it grew, steadily. George moved into larger scale production, and soon Paul's father also became involved in the business.

At this time the business was not yet able to sustain two full-time wages, and so Paul’s dad helped out in the evening and at weekends. The business continued to prosper and grow until Paul’s father was able to join the business full-time and Minnitron moved into a

dedicated factory unit.

This was a timely move, as it fuelled the next stage of Minnitron’s growth.

As innovative as George was, he didn't want to spend his time on the operational side of the business. Paul’s father, however, had spent his career in production roles and was able to organise that side of the business. So his key focus was the development and management of the business’ production processes. As part of this drive, delivering to customers quickly and on time was embedded into the core ethos of the business. The principle remains today and has been instrumental in the organisation’s success.

A tough decision Over the following years, Minnitron worked with an impressive range of clients.

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“

We’ll do what China can’t

”

Delivering some huge production runs for household names like Hornby, MK Electric and Black & Decker.

However, today, the work Minnitron carries out is far more likely to be for smaller run projects, for prototypes and fast turnaround projects.

This change of direction was a deliberate decision. Around 15 years ago the market started to evolve as the larger, highprofile clients increasingly began to focus on price. As a result, more and more volume work was heading overseas, to markets like China.

Ten years ago the situation was coming to a head, and Paul had to make a choice.

He could try and restructure the business, so it was able to compete, or he could identify, and focus on, the opportunities that did remain. In what was

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clearly a wise decision, he chose the latter.

His decision meant Minnitron could continue to focus on its core values of delivering quality, quickly and on time.

These were benefits businesses dealing with the overseas markets were not getting, and it gave Minnitron a real point of difference.

“We identified that we didn’t want to compete in the volume market,” Paul continued. “So instead we concentrated on bespoke items, quick delivery and fast turnaround, working to the mantra of ‘we’ll do what China can’t.”

If Paul hadn’t taken this decision, Minnitron might not even exist today. Fifteen years ago there were around 450 PCB manufacturers in the UK. Today there are just 50.

Making it work To survive, the business has had to be good at what it does.

And Paul works with the team to embed, encourage and incentivise continued focus on the company’s core values.

This approach has included rotating employees around departments within the business, which has given the staff a deeper appreciation of what their colleagues have to do, and how their roles affect others within the business.

Paul explained: “Our print manager has been in the business for 45 years. We moved him to the packing department for a couple of weeks, and he thought it was brilliant. He was able to use his experience to help them, and he came away with a new appreciation of the challenges they faced.”

One of Paul’s latest initiatives gives the staff a small financial reward if all the jobs scheduled for a given week are completed on time.

“The key is everyone gets a bonus. It means the staff are all invested in it, and they all pull together,” Paul added. “It’s a relatively small incentive, but it's made a massive difference.”

Extending the Minnitron offer has also been crucial to the business’ success. This

has meant staying on top of evolving PCB technologies such as multi-layered boards and specialist coatings, as well as adding value to their customers with services such as assembly—populating circuit boards with a client’s components.

Offering this assembly service can be a real advantage for prototypes and small run projects. A significant example came with a customer called RepRap—pioneer in the development of 3D printing technologies for the hobby and home market. But Minnitron wasn’t RepRap’s first production partner.

Dr Adrian Bowyer, RepRap’s inventor, approached Minnitron for a quote to produce an assembled board.

Potentially a cost decision, Dr Bowyer initially turned down the quote and went to a producer in China. However, when the six-week lead time quoted by the Chinese firm became six months, Dr Bowyer’s business started to suffer. The 3D printing market

was moving quickly and every day lost was a major issue.

And so Dr Bowyer returned to Minnitron which was able to produce the circuit boards, populate them and deliver them to him within days. But beyond the fast turnaround, Dr Bowyer also had an ongoing dialogue with the Minnitron team. The team were constantly giving feedback, with ideas to improve the product. This close working relationship had a positive impact on the end product.

Aside from the improved timescales, the added value more than compensated for the relatively small price premium.

It also helped RepRap keep up with a steep growth in demand.

In the short term, currency fluctuations and other factors may be bringing some PCB manufacturing back to the UK today. But longer term, the focus on price and the resultant use of overseas producers is likely to continue.

Trends show global volumes of PCB manufacture are growing, while UK figures are in decline.

There will always be a place for companies that are innovative However, to buck this trend, Minnitron intends to continue to focus on projects to which it can add value and where they can meet short delivery times demanded by the client.

This approach will ensure that the company has a place in the market for many years to come.

So, if your business is in a market with intense, price-led, competition from overseas markets, all is not lost. There will always be a place for companies that are innovative about how they add value and those that find a need and work creatively to meet it.

Minnitron Ltd www.minnitron.co.uk breakthrough, Spring 2017

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THE FRENCH CONNECTION The success Amron Associates are experiencing today is due in no small part to a smart strategic move made in 2014, when it was brought into the Wire Belt Group of companies. Breakthrough magazine found out how this gave the company the capability to take on its biggest project to date.

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ormed in 2002, Amron Associates’ core business is providing decorative metal mesh to the architectural and interior design industry.

Working with a range of mesh manufacturers the company designs, specifies, sources and supplies solutions for a broad range of building applications such as facades and balustrades. As the business successfully grew through the early 2000s, it became apparent that their biggest constraint was a reliance on third-party manufacturers. This presented a series of challenges, including limitations on the company’s ability to innovate and on its capacity to be competitive

where cost was concerned.

Wire Belt Company has been manufacturing and supplying metal conveyor belts since the 1960s. A successful business, Wire Belt had grown over the decades through a combination of innovation and strategic mergers and acquisitions.

Foreseeing the emerging growth of automation in manufacturing and processing facilities— which leads to shorter conveyor lengths—the company began looking at opportunities that would use their manufacturing capability to produce products, and particularly wire mesh, for new applications.

The match with Amron was perfect. It gave Wire Belt

greater access to a growing market while Amron developed in-house manufacturing capabilities almost overnight.

So, in 2014, Amron became part of the Wire Belt group of companies and set up offices in Wire Belt’s Sittingbourne facility.

The move gave Amron an enormous competitive advantage. Not only did it bring their costs down, but the inhouse manufacturing capability enabled them to trial new mesh designs and materials. In the past, the company had lost out on projects due to an inability to provide product samples.

Architects won't specify a product unless they can see it, but Amron’s suppliers wouldn't

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produce a new product without a sizable order. Now the company can work with Wire Belt’s manufacturing facilities on innovative new solutions.

Architects are continually on the lookout for something new, something that hasn't been seen before. They want their work to have individuality and impact. Amron's ability to develop unique products in-house has put it in a much stronger position.

It was this new found capability that enabled Amron to pitch for and win, its biggest project to date—supplying blinds for the refurbishment of a major French Government building in Paris. The high profile of the project meant Amron needed to do all it could to be part of it, seeing it as an extremely valuable showcase of its capabilities. However, the project turned out to be far from straightforward, as they quickly discovered.

The journey began when a Belgian company contacted Amron wanting to know if it could supply flexible mesh for use in roller shutters. The project architects wanted all of the windows covered with a metal mesh as a purely decorative feature.

Amron was sure it was possible, but they had not done it before. The first unknown that the team had to deal with was the material that had already been specified—aluminium.

While the design was one that the company was familiar with, the factory had never worked with the softer metal before. So significant trialling was needed to see how the machines reacted to the aluminium and to find a way to create the forms that had traditionally only been made with steel materials. Amron also needed to ensure that the usual, manual, approach to the mesh assembly was practical with the softer metal and that

it could be stitched through the mesh without deforming.

With the solutions identified the next step was to produce samples to send to the French customer, still not knowing whether the company had won the business.

The samples performed flawlessly, but there was another request. The blinds needed to be a particular colour—bronze. So the aluminium had to be anodised.

Amron approached the UK's largest anodisers, took the samples along and asked them if they could be coloured. This requirement turned out to be another part of the project that wasn’t straightforward.

Traditionally, anodising is carried out on solid items.

It is essentially a form of electrolysis, which relies on an electrical current being passed through the object to be treated, while it is submerged in a chemical solution. If flexible mesh, made of interlinked loops, is put through the anodising process without keeping it taught, it collapses in the solution. As a result, the current may not pass through the entire piece leaving parts un-coated. For Amron, there was a significant risk that the finish would be compromised and so the anodisers needed to develop a mounting system to tension the mesh.

The Anodisers managed to make the process work, and Amron took the freshly coated panel back to France, happy in the knowledge that the brief had been met.

It was well received, and the Amron team were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief when it won the order.

The relief was short-lived though, as a week later the next curve ball came Amron’s way in the form of an email asking what the ‘G value’, or solar property, of the mesh was.

The architects gave them a

target, but Amron had no idea what figure their mesh would achieve.

Finding someone to test the mesh was a further, nervous, challenge. Two months were spent making calls, talking to other suppliers and even Universities before a company that could carry out an accurate test was found. It was the last person they could think to ask.

It was a tense time, Amron knew the figure it needed to beat, and if the mesh came up short of the G value needed, they would lose the order along with all the time and money that had been invested in the project so far. The relief, when the call came in to say the mesh had exceeded the solar properties demanded by the project, was immense.

It turned out the mesh design had made the difference.

Similar meshes are made using flat wire while Amron’s version is produced with round wire.

The wire's shape had originally caused problems with lateral movement, which Amron needed to overcome, but it also made the mesh denser and in turn increased its G value to beyond the required figure.

So, at the beginning of 2015, orders for the first phase of the project were placed. With the materials for the last phase being delivered by August this year and totalling 3100m² of mesh.

While the project was fraught with challenges and risk, it has meant an enormous amount to Amron. Aside from the profile such a prestigious project will bring, the team has significantly advanced its manufacturing capabilities, new processes have been developed, and a new product has been created—one that outperforms the competition too!

Amron Associates

www.amronassociates.co.uk

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LATERAL

INNOVATION B

eing innovative in your business doesn’t always require new products or solutions to be developed. Sometimes it can mean using what you already have in new ways and different applications. This lateral approach is something Amron Associates has followed many times, identifying new uses for their existing products.

Recent examples include using conveyor mesh to make drag mats for sports surfaces—tennis courts, baseball pitches or golf courses—which, when pulled across the surface, helps to smooth it out between uses.

Initially manufactured as belts for sorting and moving apples, the conveyor mesh has proved to be perfect for this application.

A conveyor belt mesh has also been used as a flexible safety screen for scissor lifts—it expands as the lift platform rises and collapses down again as it falls, protecting access to the scissor mechanism. This has become one of the company's biggest selling industrial products.

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IT’S

PAYBACK TIME!

Have you engineered new products, developed new processes or come up with a solution to your clients’ problems? If you have, you could be missing out.

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ast year over 16,000 business owners received an average of £50,000 back from the UK Government. Like the majority of manufacturing and engineering business, they had invested staff time, developed prototypes, made tools and used other resources in the activities described above.

This year the Government wants to recognise even more businesses for their innovation. So we sat down with Breakthrough Funding Founder, and Publisher of Breakthrough magazine, Sue Nelson, to find out more about this ‘cash for innovation’ and how thousands of other eligible business can claim theirs...

Sue, The scheme is called R&D Tax Credits; perhaps you could start by telling me what they are?

Well, they are not about R&D, they are not about tax, and they are not about credits. So I’m not sure it’s really such a great name for them! We prefer to call it ‘cash for innovation’, which more clearly reflects what the scheme offers.

Essentially, if a business is developing processes or products, or it is trying to make its factory more efficient—or even looking for a new way to do something—that is innovation, or what the government would recognise as R&D for this scheme.

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So it’s not just for high-tech or disruptive start-ups then?

Not at all. Anyone that is trying to find new ways to do things, for example, to cut costs, or to use new materials, then that all qualifies.

The biggest problem with the label R&D is that most people in manufacturing and engineering don’t think of the eligible work that they do as being ‘R&D’. The simple reason for that is, they’re doing it all the time—it’s their day job so they don’t think it’s anything remarkable.

So what are the eligibility criteria?

First it is for UK companies only. They can be spending money abroad, making tools, for example, as long the company claiming is based in the UK. To apply through the scheme, companies also need to be eligible for corporation tax. They don’t have to be making a profit or paying tax, they just have to be under the corporation tax regime, so that means that organisations that are exempt—like charities— can’t apply. Then they must have less than 500 staff and be turning over less than €100 million— around £85 million the last time I looked.

You have a checklist on your website that explains the criteria, you call the Babbage test, where did that name come from?

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Charles Babbage is credited as being the father of the computer. But he ran out of money, and his invention never saw the light of day. If Charles had been around today and had picked up the phone, it could have been a very different story.

If anyone is wondering whether they are eligible, the easiest thing to do is to give us a call. It takes us just a couple of minutes to check their eligibility and the potential validity of a claim.

OK, so what sort of work is eligible?

The work must be self-funded. So, if a client pays you to work out how to use a new material; with a spec that is defined in every way, then that would not be an eligible activity for the company to claim against. But in my experience that never happens. What clients normally do is supply a drawing—if you are lucky it may be a CAD drawing—and they say ‘if you can make that work I will buy 5000 units’. In that situation, you are taking the risk. You’ve put in the time, materials and other resources to make it work, but if you can’t find the answer, then the loss rests with you.

In this scheme it means that you are doing selffunded development work and therefore all those costs can be claimed.

For example, we are helping an injection moulding company at the moment. It was approached by a customer with a gear problem in one of their products. The customer came to our client with a CAD drawing. But, as many engineers will tell you, there is no guarantee the drawing will work without some fine tuning, particularly to accommodate nuances in the production process. So, our client had to develop the product to make it work and be capable of mass production. That part of their work can be claimed as R&D, and engineering and manufacturing companies are doing this sort of thing all the time.

Do businesses have to be doing something groundbreaking?

It has to be new and different and overcome a design challenge or production problem. We get to work with some amazing businesses that are doing groundbreaking work, of course. But our clients undertake a huge range of activities.

Just this month we have been working with a food business that is processing nuts. It is entirely redeveloping its processes and production facility from the ground up to solve very specific problems in its industry. It’s not going to change the world, but it’s fascinating and its important work that deserves to be covered by the scheme.

We have also recently worked with a company developing instruments for knee and dental surgery. One of our clients is making a mobile coffee cart and grinding machine that is pedal

powered. We have worked with unmanned aircraft, fighter helicopters, oil rigs, car seats and an array of components that go into a host of other products and equipment. The range of projects being created, and the way that is being done, is really diverse and just amazing.

Most businesses and engineers we come across don’t think they are doing anything special. They are solving problems all day long and think that is just what they do. But they are inventing new solutions—solving problems—and that is exactly what the R&D tax relief scheme is for; to encourage and support innovation in all its many forms.

I would say if anyone is in manufacturing, and they are producing something in their factory, I am 99% sure they will have a claim. It may not be huge, but there will be a claim that will result in a cash payment.

“

if anyone is in manufacturing, and they are producing something in their factory, I am 99% sure they will have a claim

”

That shows what a broad range of activity the scheme can cover. Within companies that are eligible, what costs can you include in a claim?

Staff time is a key cost that businesses can claim.

If for example, a member of the production team is working for one-day a week on an eligible project, we can include 20% of their salary in a claim. Raw materials being used to test new processes and manufacturing equipment cannot be sold and are ultimately wasted, so their costs are eligible. Or indeed if prototypes are being made as part of the project, those costs can go in too.

So essentially it’s time, materials and physical resources.

Yes and in many cases subcontractors, but you can’t claim capital expenditure such as machines.

You said earlier that companies don’t have to be making a profit. But how does that work if the money is offset against tax?

That’s why the term tax credit is misleading. It’s not a credit. It’s cash. If you are making a profit, then you get a corporation tax refund. But if

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you are making a loss the revenue will give you the cash. Or if you want to reduce your tax bill going forward you can decide to take tax relief instead. That’s a decision between you and your accountant. But we find most businesses take the money as cash.

Why did the Government introduce this scheme?

The Treasury shows that for everyone £1 given out in this R&D scheme, just under £2 is generated in the economy. It is therefore a net benefit to the country not a cost. That is why they want companies to apply for it, and that is why I can’t see them stopping it, anytime soon.

One of our manufacturing clients received over £200,000 in cash through the scheme. That is not unusual, and they used the money to invest in new equipment and to employ new staff. That is quite typical too.

But the Government are struggling with takeup, why do you think that is?

I don’t believe the communication has been good enough. And as I said earlier, the name doesn’t help. I also don’t think accountants understand how broad its application is. Many believe you can only claim if you are in profit, which is fundamentally untrue.

And is there a perception that it is reserved for high-tech projects.

Absolutely. When the scheme first started in 2000, the scope was quite narrow. A lot of accountants were trained back then; however the scope has widened since, but I don’t think that a lot of accountants realise that. So no, it doesn’t have to be something very high-tech, as long as it’s solving a difficult problem.

Take-up is growing, though. Over 18,000 businesses applied last year. But that should be more like 500,000, if not more. We know that 90% of companies that could claim haven’t. And the Government want them to claim; they want to invest in innovative businesses because it generates value for the economy.

OK, it’s Government funding, so there must be loads of complex forms. If you are eligible, how easy is it going to be to access the credits?

We handle all that for our clients. We know how precious time is for business owners, so we literally do almost everything, they don’t have to fill in a single form.

We start by interviewing them. We will go to the client’s facility and have a look at what they are doing to gain an in-depth understanding of their business by simply talking to them. Then we

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compile a report. Typically, the interview and factfinding take just a couple of hours.

Is it worthwhile, though, how much do you get back for your clients?

Since we started in 2014, we’ve helped our clients claim £6.8m. The average payout is around £40,000.

And why do your clients choose to work with you?

I think it comes down to maximising their claim.

We have an excellent reputation and working relationship with HMRC. We submit hundreds of reports in a year. HMRC know that we are fair and reasonable and we know exactly what can, and what can’t, go into the claim.

I can give you an example. One of our clients had asked their accountant to develop a claim, and they identified £50,000 of eligible costs. The owner of the company felt it should be more and asked us to take a look. We looked through their claim and identified over £900,000. The repayment is typically 25% of the claim, and our client received almost £200,000 when they had originally been in line for just £12,500.

I put that difference down to our experience.

Claiming cash for innovation is all we do. I have a team of 18 people focussed on that task. Most of the accountants we come across—and we work with and train a lot of them—raise claims relatively infrequently, so they are not as well versed in the scope of the scheme.

At this point, there’s bound to be someone asking themselves, ‘Will HMRC start to pay more attention to my business if I submit a claim?’

A lot of clients are concerned about that! But they really don’t need to be. The R&D tax inspectors are completely separate to the rest of HMRC. They are specialists in this area. They are tasked with giving this money away, and they are genuinely really helpful.

How long does it take to go from a first conversation to ‘cash for innovation’ arriving in your bank account?

Well, if a client is well organised it can be relatively quick. We saw a client in December last year, and we toured their factory and carried out an interview. We submitted their claim before Christmas, and I have just heard today that the client has £241,000 due to be paid into their bank account next week. That is exactly five weeks from start to finish—with Christmas thrown in for good measure.

Of course, it’s a two-way street. We can work quickly, but we need clients to respond quickly

“

One of our manufacturing clients received over £200,000 in cash through the scheme.

That is not unusual

”

too. The process is not always that quick, but it can be. And as long as there are no queries from HMRC, they commit to making payments in 28 days from the date a claim is submitted.

What do clients need to give you to enable you to prepare a claim?

They need to arrange a time for the interview and the factory visit. That enables us to compile the technical report which is the majority of the work.

And do they need to supply detailed financial information?

We do need financial information, but it isn’t onerous. We need salary details and other cost information. But only at a top level and these can come from a company’s accounting systems. We don’t need copies of individual invoices, although

they need to be available should HMRC want to see them.

It really isn’t a huge drain on time when we get involved. But I often put it this way: If a client asks you to put in five hours work and they will pay you £250,000, would you do it? I haven’t met anyone who said ‘no’ yet - even at the average claim value of £50,000 for the five hours work.

That sounds too good to be true, what is the catch?

There really isn’t one. Our biggest challenge is convincing people that it isn’t too good to be true; or that they are not pushing their luck.

Why do they think that?

Well, we see numerous situations where a client’s accountant has told them they are not eligible when they are. The accountants don’t understand the legislation surrounding the scheme. It’s hugely frustrating when we know the work we are doing is helping businesses to grow, and we see jobs saved by an injection of cash.

So we say to anyone that thinks they may have a claim, ‘give us a call’, if you’re not eligible we will tell you straight away, but if you’re in engineering and manufacturing and solving lots of problems – chances are, you are!

Breakthrough Funding breakthroughfunding.com

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HISTORY IN THE MAKING

Rope has been made at the Master Ropemakers site on the Chatham Dockyard for 400 years. But despite being steeped in history, it is the business’s innovative approach that sees it thriving today, as we found out when we spoke to Alex Rowling.

T

he site at the Dockyard is impressive, and even in its heydey it was quite unusual. The quarter mile long ‘rope walk’ building was not typical of its time. Traditionally rope would be made in the street—hence the number of roads named Rope Walk. However, the Dockyard was a naval site that serviced vast fleets of tall ships, so rope was being made all day, every day and investment to make the site as efficient as possible was worthwhile.

Historically, the rope making process at the Dockyard started with the yarn being spun from the raw material—coir, flax or sisal for example.

The machinery used to spin the yarn made it a dangerous task, but despite this, it was reserved for women and children, while the men would take the freshly spun yarn and use it to make rope.

“Nowadays we buy in the yarn,” Alex explained.

“It's simply too expensive to produce using traditional methods.”

Today, the highly skilled ropemakers at the Dockyard are still using equipment dating back to the Victorian era to turn the yarn into rope.

Massive industrial machinery that is functionally basic by today’s standards but clearly highly effective.

The first thing you notice when you walk into the rope walk is the sheer size of the room and the machinery it houses. Then your other senses kick in, and the smell hits you. It's not an unpleasant smell, but it is striking, and somehow

you can instinctively tell that this has developed over hundreds of years.

Of course today, demand for rope from passing tall ships is somewhat diminished. And so the key for Master Ropemakers to remain viable has been diversification.

Of course, as a part of the Chatham Historic Dockyard, the business benefits from tourist income, which is a significant revenue stream.

But the need to appeal to the tourists does place some constraints on what the business can do and how it does it, and this makes for a complex dynamic, particularly when trying to compete with other ropemakers for some of the core customers and markets.

However, the traditional processes used by Master Ropemakers can be a real advantage.

While the company may find it harder to compete with automated rope makers in volume sectors, it can produce products—like coir ropes—that nobody else does.

Talking about coir rope production, Alex continued: “It takes five men three days to make one coil of coir rope, so it is not viable for most commercial rope manufacturers. The yarn is made from coconut husk and is very delicate.

So there is a lot of stopping and starting in the production, as breaks in the yarn are repaired.

But it is a unique product; it is worth the effort.”

Coir rope remains popular today in a number of applications. While it is not as strong as some other ropes, it floats and so is still in demand in

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“

The business does still supply tall ships, when historically accurate material is required

”

the marine sector where it is favoured for items like fenders.

The business does still supply tall ships, particularly when historically accurate material is required, this may be with coir rope or one of the many other ropes they produce. But other sectors have also emerged over the years. Gardens and landscaping is currently a strong market, as is film and theatre production. Where a production calls for a rope based prop that fits an era, Master Ropemakers can draw on their traditional processes to make it.

One of the fastest growing sectors for rope today is in sports and fitness applications. Battle ropes, where a pair of heavy 15m long ropes are waved up and down from one end, has been showing tremendous growth over the last couple, of years. While the latest ‘big thing’ is rope wall yoga. We may not be doing it justice in our description, but it is in essence vertical yoga,

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using ropes to hang on a wall.

Together these trends have made sports and fitness the largest market Master Ropemakers serve, and it looks like continuing to be so for the foreseeable future.

A gift of an idea Another growing revenue stream for the company has come from extending its range into new categories. Since Alex joined Master Ropemakers in 2015, she has introduced many new souvenir items—made from rope—into the gift shop range.

From dog leads to doormats, the range is always evolving. Alex tries to come up with a regular stream of product ideas which the rope making team then create. New products are introduced to the gift shop at the Dockyard and, if they are a success, the products are added to the range that is available wholesale to other retailers.

Traditional products—such as the sailor's brush—now sit alongside more contemporary gift items such as its best-selling fridge magnets, in shops all over the world.

Alongside the retail projects, the Master Ropemakers also get involved in developing bespoke solutions for clients. One recent example was for a customer who sells and installs undersea pipelines.

The project involved a pipeline that was sunk to

3,000 metres. At times, the pipeline would need to be released from the seabed and allowed to float back to the surface, and when it did the customer needed a way of making it visible.

The client approached Master Ropemakers to see if they could help. Alex explained the solution they came up with: “After trialling several options we ended up producing a polypropylene monkey fist—a type of knotted ball—that is attached to the pipeline. The pipeline is tied to the seabed, but when the ropes are cut, it floats to the surface. Our approach was to attach a series of these monkey fists along the pipe at regular intervals, and when they break the surface, the monkey fists are visible.

“It took a lot of trial and error, testing different materials and formats, but eventually we found the right combination for the project,” Alex added.

Testing times As well as testing designs, testing the raw rope product is a crucial part of the production process for the Master Ropemakers—one that becomes increasingly stringent over time.

Every batch of rope needs to be tested to a break point defined by the British Standard Institute. Every single coil of rope made on the site is produced one metre longer than needed, with the extra piece subjected to the tests.

“If the rope fails the test we can’t sell it,” said Alex. “It goes into a form of quarantine, and it can’t be used. Luckily that doesn’t happen often because the yarn is also subject to stringent testing before it is used to make the rope.”

Some ropes will also be tested to standards that exceed the British Standard. The Ministry of Defence, for example, is a Master Ropemakers customer along with other organisations that require products that might be used in extremely demanding applications. Years ago, a failure rate of one in ten was accepted for manufactured rope. Clearly, that wouldn’t be acceptable today where the rope is used for abseiling from a helicopter! So significant ongoing effort goes into safety and compliance throughout the manufacturing process; from the design phase, through material selection to final production.

So, for Alex and the team at Master Ropemakers, the challenge is an interesting one. Trying to maximise the benefits of having a 400-year history, while still showing the ability to be innovative and relevant today. It's a challenging task, but one the company is rising to, and I suspect it will continue to do so for some years to come.

Master Ropemakers www.master-ropemakers.co.uk breakthrough, Spring 2017

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SQUARING THE CIRCLE Often, all it takes to come up with a great idea is a fresh perspective.

That was certainly the case when Quadsaw designer Michael Sebhatu saw an opportunity for a product with the potential to save the construction industry ÂŁ320 million a year.

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M

ichael Sebhatu was born in Eritrea.

From a young age, he had dreamt of becoming an engineer. As a teenager, in pursuit of his dream, he moved to neighbouring Ethiopia to work in his brother’s factory. Sharing his time between working in the factory and studying, Michael learned quickly. However, he was stopped in his tracks, when war broke out between Ethiopia and his native Eritrea.

The prospect of being forcibly deployed in the Ethiopian army, to fight against members of his family, forced him to leave.

And so, in 1990, Michael arrived in the UK, and within days he was studying mechanical engineering. A college diploma came first, then a degree in mechanical engineering before he went on to achieve a Masters in Product Design.

It was around this time that Michael met Ean

Brown who had carved out a successful career as a corporate lawyer, centred around his interest in how the law was used in business. An inhouse lawyer for the majority of his career, Ean had developed strong expertise in international business growth. Several years spent using his legal knowledge working on buying, selling and listing businesses had given Ean a thorough understanding of how to maximise the potential within an organisation’s intellectual property. But he was ready for a new challenge and was keen to identify a way he could be more in control of his destiny.

When the pair met they hit it off straight away, and it was a perfect business match too.

Michael had a raft of ideas buzzing around in his head, and Ean had the desire, expertise and drive to make them happen. And so Genius IP was formed—with a mission to commercialise breakthrough technologies.

Five years after the business was formed, Michael and Ean are launching their first breakthrough product into the construction sector: The Quadsaw.

The Quadsaw is a typical example of something that, when you see it in action, you wonder why it didn’t already exist. In fact, that’s exactly how Michael came up with the idea.

The birth of an idea To support his studies Michael was working as a kitchen fitter. One day, he saw an electrician cutting out a rather ragged hole for a socket. Michael asked the tradesman why he wasn’t using a square hole cutter to make the hole and was surprised to discover there wasn’t one. He watched over the following days as the electrician fitted the socket, a plasterer came along and filled in the gaps and then a decorator came and painted around it. He knew there must be a better and less time-consuming way to do this.

And so, Michael set to work designing a tool that would cut out perfectly square and rectangular holes—a tool that would enable a socket to be fitted quickly and without the need for other tradespeople to make good.

The traditional approach to making holes for sockets was using a pad saw to laboriously cut the four sides of the square hole needed. Even for an experienced electrician it was a slow process, they were rarely square and multiple

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sockets never quite aligned correctly. As a result, more time was needed to finish the job to an acceptable standard after the sockets had been installed. All this effort meant the process took an average of five minutes per socket Michael realised an accurate, powered, option was needed.

As a power source he opted for a drill, electricians would already have one, and they were easy to use. But to cut a squared hole would require saw blades in some configuration.

“

When you see it in action, you wonder why it didn’t already exist

�

So, with the power source chosen Michael turned his attention to developing a mechanism to convert the rotational movement of the drill to the linear movement needed to move saws that cut the sides of the square, and rectangular, holes.

This mechanism is at the heart of the Quadsaw innovation and has remained largely constant as the design evolved, but taking the idea from concept to a product that does what it set out to do has required a constant stream of fine tuning and development. This requirement extended beyond the technical capabilities of the product to areas such as ergonomics and the user experience. Ean firmly believes you never get a second chance to create a first impression, so Michael and Ean resisted pressure from their manufacturing partners to go with what you have, see what people think and fine tune it later.

On the development path, four key prototypes were developed, each more effective and userfriendly than the last. The design was finally perfected in a process that took four times as long as initially anticipated. In part, Ean puts this down to his optimistic naivety where developing an engineered product was concerned. However, it also demonstrates a dogged determination not to compromise the quality of the finished product simply to meet a forecast timescale.

A valuable partnership While the idea for the Quadsaw originally came from Michael, the contribution Ean has made to the project cannot be underestimated. When Breakthrough magazine met him it was apparent that as well as his astute legal mind, Ean is highly driven, self-motivated and methodical in his approach; with a very clear vision of how Quadsaw and the business behind it, Genius IP, should evolve.

While Michael was developing the product, Ean was hard at work managing the business side and developing their plan. He was quick to say he’s not a fan of business plans in their traditional sense: “In certain circumstances, they can be a waste of time, the primary purpose they serve is to engage with banks and venture capitalists,” he said. “But we were not planning to use these routes for funding, so a traditional business plan had no purpose.”

But that doesn’t mean Ean didn’t have a plan for how they would develop the Quadsaw business. He assessed the market size, carried out an enormous amount of research and equipped himself with all the information he needed to establish the likely potential in the business and the timeline he anticipated. Armed with this insight, he turned to financing the development and the work that would be needed to take the product to market.

Avoiding the institutional investors, the business was funded by angel investment. Ean was selective about who he allowed to invest, turning down around a third of the angels that approached them. In a departure from the norm, to be successful Ean required investors to demonstrate how they could add value to the business, beyond the financial investment.

Of course, the journey hasn’t always gone to plan, but the meticulous planning and the contingencies that Ean put in place meant the pair were always able to weather the storm.

Ean is happy to admit that he underestimated the timescales involved in bringing the Quadsaw to market. But allowing for the possibility of delays was one of the reasons he didn’t want to work with venture capital investors and the banks. The delays would have meant

“

A traditional business plan had no purpose

”

compromising the product, and that wasn’t something he was prepared to allow. Ean isn’t precious about the Quadsaw, but to compromise the product could result in failure.

Perhaps the biggest thing Ean has learnt from the journey is not technical but rather how few people have the vision to see beyond the norm.

“It’s amazing how much negativity you experience, how many people will tell you ‘it won’t work’ or ‘it can’t be done’. It can get to you, but you have to maintain belief in your idea,” said Ean. They were proved right in November last year.

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“

It’s amazing how much negativity you experience. It can get to you, but you have to maintain belief in your idea

”

Ean and Michael took the Quadsaw to market and opened it up to pre-orders, to test their assumptions and the reaction their product would generate. The response has been way beyond their expectations, with interest coming from all corners of the globe. As a result, they have changed the plans for how and where the

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Quadsaw will be sold. And it has given the team confidence in the assumptions they made. In fact, it showed that what they thought may have been bullish estimates about the product’s sales potential, were, in fact, underestimating the actual demand for the Quadsaw.

Together, creative thinking, drive, patience and attention to detail have delivered a product that far exceeds the project’s original goals. The Quadsaw cuts perfectly square, or rectangular, holes in under 30 seconds. This is a massive reduction on the current five-minute average. To put this in perspective, Ean has estimated that if every electrician in the UK used a Quadsaw to cut sockets, it would save the construction industry £320 million a year. We think that qualifies the Quadsaw as a breakthrough!

Genius IP quadsaw.com

PLAYING A WEIGHTING GAME

The use of 3D printing is not something new to Formula 1 teams, who have been using the process in prototyping for many years. However, Ferrari is using the technology in an entirely new way as they strive to turn their fortunes around.

To increase the performance of the engines Ferrari build for their Formula 1 programme, the engineering team have been working to increase the compression they can achieve within their power plant. Technology has been employed to deliver a more effective spark; however, this places increased pressure—upto 400 bar—and greater heat stress on the components in the combustion chamber.

The aluminium alloys traditionally used for pistons and other components cannot handle these stresses, but up to now steel alloys that could handle the pressure and heat have been impractical due to their higher weight.

The 3D printing process enables complex shapes to be produced that are impossible to cast and can fill solid objects with a honeycomb structure rather than solid material. As a result, using the process with the steel alloys gives the engine’s designers the advantages of strength without the drawbacks of increased weight.

Scuderia Ferrari formula1.ferrari.com

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Mike James, Lesney Industries’ Managing Director, could have been forgiven for giving up on the business long ago.

But every time he has taken a hit, he’s found the strength to get back up and carry on, as Breakthrough magazine discovered.

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M

ike first joined Lesney in 1970.

At the time it was an autonomous division of Matchbox Toys and Mike’s role involved designing the tooling for model cars, which the company produced through die-casting and plastic injection moulding. Alongside the work the company undertook to support its parent Matchbox, the business also produced components for a broad range of external customers.

At the time Mike joined the company, Matchbox was facing fierce competition from across the pond and in particular toy giant Mattel, which was behind the Hot Wheels brand—a direct competitor to the company’s range of toy cars.

Unfortunately for Mike, he was made redundant quite soon after he joined.

However, nine years later Mike found himself back at Lesney after successfully applying for the role of Technical Manager. This position put him in charge of all aspects of the design and manufacture of new tooling, with a particular brief to expand

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Matchbox succumbed, and the business went into administration the plastics side of the business as the sector had started to develop and grow.

The Matchbox company was not yet free of the troubles, though, as competition remained fierce and children’s toy preferences were changing.

Toy cars were declining in popularity in favour of a new breed of electronic toys. As a result, in 1982, Matchbox succumbed, and the business went into administration.

Mike had done well in his second stint at Lesney, having risen to a senior position.

And so, when the Matchbox group failed, Mike and four colleagues acquired the Lesney Industries business from the administrators in what was essentially a management buyout.

Without the requirement to contribute to and support the larger Matchbox group, Lesney was a successful business.

Alongside the work they carried out on toy cars, the company produced components for a wide range of customers, which included manufacturers of brown goods, white goods, vehicles, industrial hardware and window furniture. It had some big volume lines which included keys. The more traditional style lever lock keys—the type that the typical keyhole symbol is based on— are all die-cast, and Lesney made millions of them.

However, one of the most recognisable products in Lesney’s portfolio was the two halves of the famous Stanley knife. If you have a Stanley knife that was made in the 70s, 80s or 90s, then Lesney will have made the handle for it. It was the sole source in the UK for over 25 years, making an average of 10,000 knife handles a week, in a range of styles.

In the white goods sector, Lesney was making plastic components in huge volumes too; 6,000 backplate mouldings

a week for Hotpoint was just one of its contracts.

Then, at the end of the 90s, the volume contracts started to disappear, some almost overnight.

Stanley was taken over, the new owner brought in purchasing teams, and the work was moved to China to reduce costs.

Not all business was going to Asia though. Around the same time Hotpoint was sold to Italian owners who wanted to use suppliers in its own country. While other business was being moved to Eastern Europe and Russia.

It was a tough time for Lesney as external forces were seeing significant streams of revenue evaporate. But internally things were not easy either. The partnership that had led the management buyout was breaking down, and by 2006 Mike had gained sole control of the business. To help manage the business’s costs and improve its efficiency, in 2007 he made the decision to move from the company’s original site in Hackney, to a new, more practical building

in Harlow, where the company remains today.

The challenges were not over, though. Almost as soon as the business had settled into its new home, the banking sector crashed with yet another significant impact on the high-volume of work coming in. Some customers were reducing orders, some pulling them back completely and, unfortunately, some customers went out of business.

Looking back Mike wonders how he and the business survived this bleak period. It took some tough decisions.

Mike and his Management team did everything they could.

The business was scaled back, and every possible efficiency

As soon as the business had settled into its new home, the banking sector crashed

was made. There was a necessary reduction in the organisation’s headcount, but to keep this to a minimum the business went down to a twoday week for a period.

A brighter future Many would have given up, but not Mike. And as a result, today, the business continues to move forwards and build on the successful introduction of new products. But it looks very different to the business Mike and his colleagues took on in the early 80s. It continues to run as a lean and efficient organisation, but it serves a different part of the market for die-cast, and plastic injection moulded components.

Accepting that the volume contracts the business had enjoyed are a thing of the past, Lesney, like so much of the UK manufacturing sector, is focussing on where it can add value to its clients.

Lesney is much more able to compete on complex and bespoke projects. Toolmaking is not an easy process— regardless of whether it’s for plastic injection moulding or

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metal die-casting. Getting a tool production-ready—not just the right shape for the component being made, but also for the process of having material injected in and flowing through the tool to achieve the desired result—takes skill. If you are thousands of miles away from your supplier, adapting a tool might be manageable if the component being made is simple. But if it’s complex, the ability to sit with the toolmaker, to talk through what is needed face-to-face, and to review the changes as they go, is vital. As is a manufacturer that is willing to invest their time and effort in a project, rather than one that is looking to get the job out of the door as quickly as possible, keeping costs to a minimum.

The time it would take would be wasted if they couldn’t make it work Achieving the impossible This value was demonstrated by recent projects that Lesney have taken on for a company manufacturing gearboxes for mechanical and mobility aids.

When Mike first visited the customer, it was making the cases for its gearboxes by machining solid aluminium blocks. The cases, while being beautifully engineered, were

expensive. Mike asked if the company had tried die-casting them. It had, but the tight tolerances required, to ensure that the gears meshed properly through their bearing supports, meant that the die-caster initially approached was not able to make them accurately enough.

Most castings can be produced down to a tolerance of around 0.1mm, but the cases required a greater accuracy of 0.015mm. Mike had to prove to the customer that Lesney could deliver this degree of precision.

The time it would take Mike and his team would be wasted if they couldn’t make it work, it was a risk, but he was happy to take on the challenge.

Mike’s team had to overcome a number of hurdles. The tool needed to be accurate enough; the level of shrinkage that occurs when a component is cooled needed to be controlled; and it needed to ensure it could maintain consistency across a production run. It took hours of trial and error to check the parameters and to establish the best methodology. Numerous test components were made, and scrapped. It took the best part of a year, but Lesney was able to meet the tolerances needed. And the customer has been able to cut the cost of production of each gearbox case to one-tenth of the price of the machined alternative.

Of course, the customer is delighted. It simply wouldn’t have been able to take this route with an overseas supplier.

The team at Lesney are also pleased. It has a new customer, an advocate, and it has a new level of service to offer other customers. And it has a future, which, considering what the business has had to endure in the past, is well deserved.

Lesney Industries Ltd lesney.co.uk breakthrough, Spring 2017

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CREATIVITY: THE FATHER OF INVENTION?

Suzanne Callander ponders the need to let the creative juices flow as part of the problem solving process.

W

hile attending a business event in Finland recently, my interest was piqued by the guest speaker’s presentation about the need for entrepreneurs to tap into their creative side to help them stay ahead in a rapidly evolving world.

The speaker was Bruce Oreck, a former US ambassador to Finland. He started out as a tax lawyer, specialising in environmental issues, working mainly for the oil and gas industry. His presentation revolved around the notion that innovation and creativity are very different things, and that the most truly disruptive business ideas and solutions emanate from the creative side of our brain.

The more I thought about what he was saying, the more I realised that he made a good point. It is generally from creative thinking that truly disruptive ideas are born – from ‘thinking outside the box’.

Innovation can be defined as a change within a stable system and is generally

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considered to be an idea that is replicable at an economical cost and which satisfies a need.

It is something that can be measured and managed and it is also something that can be taught. Creativity on the other hand is the act of identifying a completely different approach to an existing task. It is difficult to measure and almost impossible to manage.

Disruption – the new business norm Working on the assumption that disruption is the new business norm, then maybe we should all be tapping into the creative side of our brains and there is evidence to show that it is a valuable commodity in business. A 2010 study by IBM, involving over 1,500 CEOs of some of the biggest companies across the globe, identified creativity as being the most important quality for the next generation of business leaders – beating rigour, management discipline, integrity and even vision.

In his presentation, Bruce Oreck explained that our

brains are hardwired to be pattern making machines.

These patterns also represent familiarity, which breeds predictability – the enemy of creativity. It is these ingrained patterns and taught reproductive thinking that most often affects our decisions in business.

So, we should be aiming to use our creativity too, when looking for solutions to business problems and it should be considered as an indispensable tool to allow us to compete in today’s fast moving world. It is important to remember that it goes hand-in-hand with innovation.

Creativity gives us the ability to produce new and truly unique ideas, while innovation is the implementation of that creativity. We need to give ourselves permission to have fun and let our creative sides out to play now and again. The old adage still holds true today.

All work and no play does make us dull and it might also result in us missing that elusive but much sought after ‘lightbulb’ moment.

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For over 20 years, Hydrotechnik has been one of the UK’s leading distributors of hydraulic testing and analysis components and equipment. It knows its sector extremely well, having built up a wealth of experience in that time. But that wasn’t enough for Director Richard Price as we found out.

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UNDER

PRESSURE A

pproximately three years ago, while reviewing the business’s strategic direction, Richard had a lightbulb moment which led to the company taking a bold, but ultimately profitable, move in its quest for further growth.

“I was considering our areas of expertise,” explained Richard, “when I thought to myself, ‘hang on a minute. We have all these parts, and we sell them to people who make rigs, why don’t we do that ourselves?’”

Before that realisation, Hydrotechnik typically supplied components to either systems integrators or end users within design engineering departments, who would use them to build rigs and systems to perform a broad range of hydraulic and hydrostatic tests. While the business was successful simply selling good volumes of components, its potential to add value was limited. At the same time, across the various markets that Hydrotechnik served, in-house engineering departments were disappearing amid efficiency drives and the company’s end user customers were increasingly outsourcing the design and build of test rigs to systems integrators.

Richard spotted this opportunity. It was Hydrotechnik’s chance to open up new revenue streams while adding increased value to its existing customer base. And so the company set out to design, build and commission test rigs and

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testing environments for the business it knew.

It wasn’t a simple move, and it wasn’t without its challenges and risks. A significant amount of new skills and knowledge was needed to manufacture turn-key systems. But it wasn’t long before the company started to develop a reputation for its work and enquiries began to grow.

Hydrotechnik’s initial plan was to serve its existing end user clients, who were reducing their in-house capabilities and looking for outsourced

The rigs the team built for Formula 1 have to move from race to race.

This means they had to be liftable, transportable and robust suppliers. Yellow goods manufacturers—construction and agricultural vehicles—were a core sector due to its need for hydraulic systems and these customers responded well to the news that Hydrotechnik could help them further with their needs. But as word started to spread about the company’s extended capabilities, enquiries came in from a variety of new sectors and for some new and unusual applications.

These new applications have proven to be fascinating for the Hydrotechnik team. They have included several applications in motorsport, including the pinnacle of the sport—Formula 1—where the performance of components and systems is highly scrutinised. This application was far from straightforward and stretched Hydrotechnik’s knowledge.

Test rigs are usually static.

They need to be robust, but once commissioned they will typically stay put. The rigs the team built for Formula 1 have to move from race to race. This means they had to be liftable, transportable and robust. “You

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can’t watch them fall to pieces when they roll over something. You have to make sure they last,” Richard added.

Variety makes for interesting work Not all applications Hydrotechnik gets involved in are so high-tech and glamorous. But they still prove interesting. For example, one client makes plumbing fittings, everyday products you can see in the likes of B&Q or Screwfix.

Regardless of the applications, the disciplines are essentially the same. But that doesn’t mean the odd curve ball doesn’t crop up. Richard explained, “I’d never have dreamt we’d be creating hydrostatic test systems for a company making industrial electrical fuses. But the nature of the product means the manufacturer must be sure their fuses are not porous. Each case is pressure tested, if it holds pressure for a specified length of time it passes, if not the casing is rejected”.

Some projects can create enormous challenges. The biggest of which so far has been

“

If it holds pressure for a specified length of time it passes, if not the casing is rejected

”

for a company in the rail sector. The business overhauls rolling stock and part of that process requires large cylinders, used in braking systems, to be pressure tested to ensure their integrity. It’s a safety-critical part of the process which results in certification for the component.

Before they even got to designing the system, the size of the company presented challenges that had to be overcome. Identifying the right people and departments to communicate with wasn’t easy, and then, as you might expect, the health and safety requirements for getting on site were far from straightforward either.

Has it been a good move for Hydrotechnik?

Richard thinks it has, “It is still a relatively small part of our business. But, from the level of enquiries coming through, and how they are

growing, I can see it more than doubling in the short term.”

Hydrotechnik’s size means it is not caught up in bureaucracy and multiple lines of communications. It means they can be flexible, react quickly and take on projects with a level of complexity or uncertainty that larger businesses just cannot handle. This agility is, in part, what has enabled the business to be successful with this new venture. However, the team realise that the factors that made the move possible in the first place have the potential to wipe out any benefits. So they make sure they know when to stop; when they need to be tougher with themselves.

This is an excellent example of a business that has diversified, not in its product offering, but in its reach across its value chain. Next time you are considering strategies to grow your business, don’t ignore the skills and knowledge within your teams and how that might be used to develop and expand on the depth of your offer.

Hydrotechnik UK Ltd www.hydrotechnik.co.uk

Hydrostatic or hydraulic

D

efining his take on the difference between hydrostatic and hydraulic Richard said:,”Hydrostatic testing looks at whether a vessel or component holds pressure.

It will be filled with water, oil or the appropriate fluid and taken up to a relatively high pressure, before being locked off to hold the pressure. The decay in that pressure would then be measured over time to identify the vessels performance.”

In comparison, he explained hydraulic testing: “Hydraulic testing will generally be assessing a hydraulic system’s performance. It would vary from one system to another. But, typically, the system would be pressurised within operating ranges to establish whether it performs as expected.”

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ARE YOU READY FOR A HEATING REVOLUTION?

Going ‘off-grid’ is often thought of as taking an alternative approach. But it may not be long before it is a very normal thing to do, as Breakthrough magazine found out when we spoke to Hamish Wilson of Minus7

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o heat a building to a typical 23°C, traditionally something is heated up by a heat source at hundreds or indeed thousands of degrees centigrade to a temperature of typically 70°C, and then cooled down to achieve the temperature balance required.

The same goes for hot water.

It’s often heated to around 65°C then cooled to a more tolerable level. This approach is hugely wasteful but is the norm in today’s heating and hot water systems. A rulebreaking solution from Minus7 challenges this traditional practice in an effort to reduce unnecessary energy wastage.

It does so by harnessing renewable energy. And, while the Minus7 approach is contributing to climate change reduction, it is also tackling the growing challenge of fuel poverty faced by many today.

The concept behind Minus7, which is the brainchild of Naval Architect Alastair Hunter, is relatively straightforward. It combines solar thermal, heat pump and energy storage technologies to capture, boost, store and distribute energy as heat. At its core is a roofing system made of liquid-filled solar thermal panels that can harvest energy day and night—at temperatures as low as -7°C (hence the name Minus7). The captured energy is then transferred to underground thermal stores via heat exchangers. The stores work as energy sources for the heating and hot water requirements of the building.

The complex balance between the components that make up the system is discretely controlled by a solar energy processor (SEP) developed

by Minus7, while the building occupants can control the heating and water temperature with a conventional thermostat and timer.

This approach is not new.

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“

The appetite for renewable energy solutions just wasn’t strong enough

”

Back in the 1980s, a prototype of the system was built into a house using similar principles.

Its design was based around a steel frame. Water circulated within the roof element of the frame and a heat store was incorporated into the core of the building.

“This solution didn’t gain traction as it was ahead of its time,” said Hamish Wilson, Director at Minus7. “The appetite for renewable energy solutions just wasn’t strong enough. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s various attempts were made to commercialise a system of this type, but unfortunately they all failed.”

Today, the situation is very different and much more favourable. The economic environment is right, with incentives available for the adoption of renewable energy solutions, and there is a greater understanding of the environmental benefits that renewables offer.

However, Hamish believes the real enabling factor has been an evolution of the technology and knowledge, which has allowed significant improvements in the control technology, together with a better understanding of the mechanisms of heat capture and storage. As a result, systems like the Minus7 solution are able to realise the full potential on offer.

“The more sophisticated technology available today enables much finer control of a three stage system,” added Hamish. “For example,

our SEP knows when to run the heat pump and at what temperature. This capability means the combined solution is now a viable alternative to traditional heating methods; in both its effectiveness through temperature management and its efficiency through accurate levels of control.”

Everything is under control It is the knowledge of the control strategy that gives Minus7 its competitive edge.

The company has spent years developing a deep understanding of the nuances of controlling a heat pump, controlling fluid temperatures coming from a roof and how they distribute heat into buildings at lower temperatures.

While this evolution in technology, and a growth in demand for sustainable solutions, makes the project viable today, commercialising it has by no means been easy for the Minus7 team.

“Fine tuning the control technology to maximise system efficiency and effectiveness has been tricky, but by far and away the biggest problem has been the bureaucratic minefield,” continued Hamish.

Getting BRE (previously the Building Research Establishment) recognition with a hybrid solution was the biggest challenge the company faced by a long way.

“The UK Government’s subsidy regime is highly prescriptive. For example, it defines heat pumps as either ‘ground source’ heat pumps, ‘water source’ heat pumps or ‘air source’ heat pumps.

Because our solution offers an entirely new approach there was no existing category for it,” said Hamish.

To overcome this barrier, the Minus7 team had to work with BRE to develop a new category Solar Assisted Heat pumps. It was a process that

took five years and relied on dogged persistence on the part of the Minus7 team. And it may not have succeeded at all were it not for support from some early adopters of the technology, who backed the company through much of the early prototyping phase. These clients enabled the company to install working systems and get real data from properties, to demonstrate that the solution, and its concepts, worked.

Worth the effort The hard work eventually paid off; Minus7 have the

certifications needed to access available subsidies and appropriately classify its products within the construction trade, and as a result, it now has a commercially viable product to take to market.

The technology still has a little way to go before the costs involved make it an effective choice for a typical threebed semi. So the focus is on new-build estates, blocks of flats and in particular, housing associations—where the solution is helping to address fuel poverty, with tenants able to buy their energy for

significantly less than traditional fuels such as gas.

Looking ahead Of course, the potential for changes to the renewable heat incentives creates a risk for the business. However the Minus7 team has a reasonable degree of confidence that the current incentives will be around for at least four more years. In that period, the business needs to work hard to reduce manufacturing costs of the system by around 40%, at which point it will be directly competitive with gas, regardless of the scale of the project. This objective is now a key strategic focus for the company and one that the team are confident that they can sucessfully meet.

But as you may imagine, the Minus7 team is not resting on its laurels; it is constantly working on new products to complement the current system. A key focus of this work is a roof system with embedded photovoltaic cells.

The cells are cooled by the water in the roof, and as a result, a significant uplift in the yields from the PV cells is expected when compared to standard solutions.

When this technology is perfected, the Minus7 team will be able to meet the aim of providing a full heat and power solution which can, in effect, take an entire residential estate off the traditional power grid, heralding a sea change in what we understand as the normal model for power generation and distribution.

Minus7 www.minus7.co.uk

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DO ANDROID FARMERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP ?

Like so many innovations, IBEX2 is driven by passion; passion in the team behind it that believes they can solve a huge perennial problem for livestock farmers—at a fraction of the cost of alternative methods.

That team is made up of three individuals with a complementary set of skills; Dr Charles Fox, Pete Williams and Ed Gummow—who we spoke to recently to find out more.

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ete and Ed had worked together for some years designing bomb disposal robots. Ed’s expertise is in electronics while Pete focusses on software.

Keen to take their work in the direction of their choosing, and sure they could do a better job on their own, they left the safety of their employed positions.

To fund the activity, and the not insignificant cost of the components and equipment they needed, they spent their days working as consultants, and they set about developing robots, initially in Pete’s conservatory, during the evenings and weekends.

Before long they had a very promising bomb disposal product that was performing well in testing and generating significant interest, and the pair moved up to an industrial unit.

“

Wouldn’t it be great if we had robots to do jobs on the farm?

”

However, the seed of a new idea was planted when Ed was chatting to his old University friend, Charles, and the idea for the IBEX2 farming robot was born. Despite Charles’ family having over 250 years of farming history, his interest lay in computing.

“Charles turned to me and said, ‘Wouldn't it be great if we had robots to do jobs on the farm?’” said Ed. “When he was younger Charles used to traipse across his family's fields with a backpack on spraying the weeds. And he wondered if it would be possible to get a robot to do it.”

It was a great idea. It may not be obvious to those outside farming, but weeds cause real

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issues for livestock farmers, with reduced yields where grazing land can’t be used as it becomes overrun. On flat ground, it is relatively easy to manage, but on farms, with hilly terrain, it’s far from easy.

In areas that a tractor or even a quad bike can’t access the only option is to send a human out.

But even if it were economically viable to pay someone to do the work—which it isn’t—it's almost impossible to find someone willing to take on the task.

It is a significant problem and one that is growing; literally.

Cost would be key Ed, Pete and Charles quickly realised that, between them, they had the skills needed to create a robot that could do the job. It had to be capable of working autonomously—an area where Charles was an expert, and it had to be able to cope with the terrain, which was bread and butter work for Ed and Pete. But the key to the

project would be the cost. The robot had to be significantly cheaper than the £250,000 plus price of the military robots the team were used to. Its price had to be comparable to a quad vehicle if their target customers were ever going to be able to afford one. And that would be the team's biggest challenge.

The project began well, helped by a grant from Innovate UK. But cost control remained the prime focus and was a problem that could have stopped the project in its tracks on several occasions.

A key challenge was the GPS system needed for location tracking. The systems used in cars and smartphones are only accurate to around 15 metres.

To position the IBEX2, Ed and the team needed to use a ‘differential’ GPS, an enhanced version that brings the accuracy to within 10cm or less. But these can cost thousands or even £10,000 plus. The IBEX2 team were lucky, though,

and came across a startup developing a differential system.

By working collaboratively with the startup company, the IBEX2 team were able to access the system they needed at a much more cost effective price.

They managed to keep other expenses low too. Laser scanners, similar to the ones you may see on self-driving cars, can cost five figures. The IBEX2 team found one with the right specification for their project at a fraction of that price. Digger tracks were used instead of military tracks, again at a fraction of the cost. Then for the power, the team used two lower specification motors per side instead of one high specification version, which slashed the price.

The overarching approach employed by the team was to find an off-the-shelf product that did the job needed, or as close as possible, and to adapt it if required, rather than start from scratch. This tactic proved to be the key to keeping the costs under control.

This ethos was probably best demonstrated by the team's choice of wheel hubs. They bought hubs made for a Mini which cost around £30 each.

“Instead of sourcing a custom bearing, making a housing and getting it cast and machined, we bought one off-the-shelf,” said Ed. “It is designed to carry around a tonne at speeds over 100mph. We have less than one-third of that weight going 5mph, so it is rated higher than we will ever need. And it’s fully weather sealed.”

The finishing line draws near The project is progressing well and is close to being made available for sale. Their model of working as consultants during the day, to fund the project, means dwindling finances do not pressure them. And they have not been forced into compromises as a result. “It means we can take the time to test ideas and the final product is only going to be released when it is ready,” concluded Ed. The IBEX2 has certainly been well received and has garnered plenty of interest from the media. Alongside coverage in trade title Farmers Weekly, the project has been covered by the BBC and the Discovery Channel. It has even been picked up by the Daily Mail who put its trademark sensationalist

take on the project with references to the Terminator!

When it is finally ready, the IBEX2 has all the ingredients to make it a success. The team has developed a vehicle that can work on 45° slopes, in deep mud or on slippery grass. It can identify terrain that is too steep and back off when necessary.

It can move autonomously, plan its routes and plot them on a map. And it can single out weeds from harmless plants, targeting them with an accurate spray of pesticide.

The IBEX2 has essentially been built using a modular approach, and the team are also looking at other applications for the technologies that have been combined to create the robot.

Three independent elements are working together—the chassis, the autonomy and the spraying equipment. Each now has a growing list of alternative applications that the team are itching to explore.

But for the time being, the focus remains squarely on bringing the IBEX2 to market for the farming sector.

Ibex Automation Ltd

www.ibexautomation.co.uk

“

The Daily Mail put its trademark sensationalist take on it with references to the Terminator!

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POETRY IN

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MOTION

Born out of a passion for electric vehicles, Union Motion is driving the development of technology that will be powering the electric motorcycles of tomorrow. We met co-founder Dom Warman Roup to find out how the team went from a blank piece of paper to a working electric sports bike and even a possible entry in the Isle of Man Zero TT.  breakthrough, Spring 2017

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he Union Motion project came to life when Dom met Damien Tanner through shared family connections. They quickly hit it off due to their common interests, including a passion for electric vehicles. It may have been inevitable, but as they discussed Damian’s entrepreneurial experience and also Dom’s background and training in product design, an idea quickly began to form.

The timing was perfect.

Damian had recently exited a software business he had set up and was looking for a new opportunity. Meanwhile, Dom’s role at the time wasn’t giving him the type of challenge he craved. And so the pair decided to come together and set up Union Motion with the aim of producing and commercialising an electric powered twowheeled vehicle (ePTW).

Although it was technology and a market that neither Dom nor Damian were experienced

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in, they were not daunted at all. The pair quickly immersed themselves in the sector and began what turned out to be a huge learning curve.

As the pair’s knowledge grew, they made a discovery that could have derailed the entire project. Batteries with the power capacity they required were not available off-the-shelf. You can’t walk into a supplier and pick up a set. Most major electric vehicle manufacturers have their batteries specially made.

This simply wasn’t an option for their prototype. However, further research identified a

“

Batteries with the power capacity they required were not available off-the-shelf

”

solution. The batteries used by the Nissan Leaf were, in effect, modular. The full pack for the car was made up of a series of smaller batteries, and it would be possible for a large enough number of them to be accommodated in a bike to provide the power they needed.

However, the team hit another problem. It’s not possible to buy a Leaf battery pack directly from a Nissan dealer. So, they searched for, and found, a Leaf that had been written off in an accident. The batteries were still in working order, and the team removed them from the car to create their first key component for their project bike: The power pack.

With the power pack identified, and its dimensions fixed, the team could set their focus on the next key component, the frame.

Damian and Dom assumed they would need to have a frame built from scratch and started the hunt for a frame

“

It was not an easy ride.

During one test a motor controller caught fire

�

builder. They found a company in the West Country that had the necessary experience. But when they visited they discovered there was an alternative option.

The frame builder already had a frame in their workshop, a complete rolling chassis in fact.

Armed with the dimensions for the power pack, Damian and Dom discovered it was a good fit. The team had sourced their second principal component.

And as it turned out they had also found a name for their new project, as the frame had come from a Yamaha Fazer, and so the Phaser Type 1 was christened.

The motor for the project was one Dom had used in a previous role. It was selected for its power to weight ratio but also because Dom knew there was someone who could set it up and make it work effectively in the Phaser Type 1.

This was Will Williams.

He had significant expertise around battery and motor control technology and had worked with Dom on previous projects, developing launch systems for powered gliders.

And so Will joined the Union Motion team tasked with integrating the motor and battery technology. He had to find a way to make the stock components work together and develop the powertrain.

This task was easier said than done! Components not specifically designed for each other had to be integrated, and lack of standardisation in this fledgeling industry made this a difficult task.

It was no easy ride. During one test, a motor controller, supplied to the Union Motion team to beta test, caught fire.

Not something that you want to

happen when sitting on top of 50kg of lithium batteries!

The team survived these setbacks, and they made the project work. Today they have an electric motorcycle that is significantly lighter than its petrol counterpart. It has a 60mile range and a very healthy amount of power on tap.

Most significantly, the team has developed a solution that thoroughly tests the technology, its parameters and capabilities. They have learned an enormous amount which has shaped the direction the business will take, and they have a test bed that has helped to get the team noticed and created a profile for Union Motion.

What does the future hold?

The Phaser Type 1 will remain a core project for the Union

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Motion team, but it was never the intention to make it a production vehicle. It is a test bed that offers an impactful way to showcase their technology and expertise.

They have already displayed the Phaser Type 1 at a variety of shows and exhibitions attracting much interest. As well as further public outings, Dom and Damian are considering a future entry into the Isle of Man Zero TT. The TT is regarded as one of the most exciting motorcycling events in the world, with a huge profile and following. The Zero

Dom and Damian are considering an entry into the Isle of Man Zero TT 80

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race for electrically powered motorcycles was introduced in 2010 and has proven to be a powerful showcase of the technology. The major manufacturers have been slow to get involved, but some of the sport’s leading riders have taken part. The technology is evolving at a much faster rate than the conventionally powered bikes, and it is expected that, where overall lap times are concerned, the electric powered bikes will easily be on a par with their petrol counterparts by as soon as 2020.

While high profile outings for the Phaser Type 1 will help Union Motion’s profile, Dom believes the slow take-up of ePTWs amongst the major manufacturers is due to there being a relatively small market beyond utility vehicles. And so it is in the more buoyant end of the market that the team are now focussing their attention—primarily using their

expertise for consultancy.

The Niche Vehicles Network have recently granted the Union Motors team funding to carry out a study into lighter weight ePTW solutions. The work is looking to explore how electric technology can be applied to bikes suitable for learners and users such as commuters, who have a more utility-based approach to the motorcycle.

There are rumours of electric powered projects in development by established motorcycle brands such as Yamaha, BMW and Harley Davidson, which bodes well for the sector. Both attitudes and legislation are changing, and so the technology will have to adapt. If they are not careful, the major manufacturers could be left behind, leaving the way clear for those businesses driving the technology today— companies like Union Motion.

Union Motion www.unionmotion.com

BRIGHT SPARKS Physicists at Kansas State University in the USA have discovered a way to mass-produce graphene from a Hydrocarbon gas and oxygen—with the aid of a car spark plug.

In a simple process, a chamber is filled with acetylene or ethylene gas and oxygen, with the spark plug used to create a contained explosion.

As the physicists discovered by accident when trying to make a carbon soot aerosol gel, the product of the reaction is graphene.

Containing just a single atom-thick sheet of hexagonally coordinated carbon atoms, graphene is known as the world's thinnest material.

It has a wide range of applications in areas including electronics and medical fields.

Compared to methods used to create graphene to date, this new process uses significantly less energy and produces higher yields.

Kansas State University bit.ly/2lq17vz

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The link between high-end audio and the avionics world may not seem immediately obvious. However, when we spoke to Chord Electronics’ Founder, John Franks, we discovered how he took knowledge from his early career with Marconi Avionics and used it to establish one of the World’s most widely respected hi-fi manufacturers.

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J

ohn, your background is in avionics, where you specialised in designing highfrequency power supply units. How did you find yourself doing that?

When I was young I had an interest in electronics which helped me secure a trainee role with Marconi Avionics, the largest employer in my area. I was placed on a team designing power supply units which was an area under constant pressure to develop supplies that could deliver increased power levels in smaller and lighter forms.

As you can imagine weight and size are an issue in avionics, but so is reliability. In military avionics, these areas become even more critical, and so we were pushing technologies that were not known in the commercial field. We were using MOSFETs (metal-oxide semiconductor fieldeffect transistors) and planar magnets to shrink the power supplies down. While they are widely used today, this was the late 70s and early 80s, and these were relatively new technologies, and we were among the first to use them in these applications.

So, how did this lead to you setting up Chord Electronics?

Well, Chord Electronics didn’t come to be for quite some time. However, like most engineers in that era, I was messing around with audio.

As transistors were becoming available, it was possible for hobbyists to play around and make amplifiers. I would build them for friends, and I even sold a few commercially!

Then something hit me. I had been working with single-ended and balanced amplifiers and found that when using balanced amplifiers, it didn’t introduce a lot of distortion back into the system.

I realised that gave some significant advantages.

The distortion inherent in single-ended amplifiers was typically overcome by introducing the amplification in stages. However, I realised that there was a way to reduce this distortion without the complexity of balancing an amplifier.

Using the techniques I had learned developing high-frequency power supplies, I could cross couple the power supply rails with an incredibly strong choke. The current demanded by the amplifier circuit would be coming equally from both the positive and negative sides. As a result, there was no ground loop distortion going back into the amplifier stage.

That was the technique I discovered back in the early 80s.

But you didn’t start Chord then?

It was still my hobby. I did build a prototype and demonstrated it at a show. But at the time, the technologies that I had used in the product were

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not commercially available, and so it would have proven to be too expensive.

I left engineering at that time and moved into sales and marketing. I did it to earn more money and advance my career. I had young children and an expensive hobby.

I put the prototype in the back of a cupboard and went off to work for a power supply company called Aztec, who were based in Hong Kong. It was making power supplies for many companies including a startup called Apple.

Aztec grew with Apple, and in the first year, they made a million power supplies for the computer company. In the second year, Aztec was making a million a month. Over a period of around ten years, Aztec went from 500 employees to 32,000, and by the time I left, I had been made a Director.

I was hankering for having more control over my life, and I would occasionally dig the prototype out of the cupboard and fiddle around with it. By this time, however, the price of the components I was using had plummeted, and I decided to give it a go. I produced a compact amplifier and put it on the market. It bombed!

I had made an amplifier the size of a shoebox that outperformed the significantly larger, highend alternatives. However, I believe the market could not accept that such a small product could work so well.

“

I had made an amplifier the size of a shoebox that outperformed the significantly larger, high-end alternatives

”

You could have been forgiven for giving up then?

Well, I left it for a while longer and went back into marketing. But I really didn’t want to be doing that.

So, when a contract I had taken on ended, I went back to the amplifier project. I spent a few happy months alone in my garage with a soldering iron, and when I finished, I had a new product that was physically bigger. I kept the same power supply, kept the same amplifier, just made it larger and this was Chord’s first successful product—the SPM 1200. We still build it today, 25 years later, albeit with several design iterations.

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Did your time working in avionics shape any other aspects of the business?

Certainly, yes. In avionics, you quickly learn that you cannot apply a Band-Aid fix to a problem.

You have to get right to the nub of any engineering issue and find the perfect fix. Whether it’s simple or complicated, it has to be the perfect fix for that application or problem. If you apply a secondary fix, like adjusting the software to solve a hardware problem, then you are likely to have problems further down the line.

Because of this, I had a philosophy of doing something well, whatever the cost and I think that gets noticed eventually. It has meant the business has grown more steadily than it possibly could have, but it has done so in a way that I am comfortable with. For example, during my time at Aztec, I had seen how companies like Amstrad had to work—how it was all geared towards volume.

Obviously, that has worked out quite well for Alan Sugar, but I just didn’t want to get into the pennypinching that has to be done in those situations.

How did that approach help the business get established?

Well, it meant we quickly started to get known for quality and reliability. Reliability was critical in

“

Before long I had more amplifiers installed at Abbey Road studios

”

broadcast situations, and our reputation got our amplifiers into the BBC for a trial. Their approval process was known to take months at the time, as it was extremely rigorous. However, three weeks after they had been installed, I had a call saying it was all done.

There I was, with a company that was only a few months old and yet had an amplifier that was broadcast qualified by the BBC. It was a tremendous accolade, and word started to get around. I suddenly had other studios calling me, and before long I had more amplifiers installed at the famous Abbey Road, and other world-leading recording studios.

It was an incredible period and helped our reputation immensely, but the professional market wasn’t our focus.

We had consumer products, and they

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“

Rob’s design had significantly more processing power than typical DAC chips

”

continued to grow steadily, but after a few years, the professional market started to decline. The number of studios began shrinking, and those that did exist began to use different products, like powered speakers.

Of course the biggest change in your sector over recent years has been the evolution of digital music formats and the growth in mobile music devices, led in part by the people at Apple who had an influence on the earlier part of your career. Has that change in direction had a negative impact on Chord?

Quite the contrary, in the last few years we have seen our turnover grow massively with the introduction of digital to analogue converters (DACs) to our range.

Every digital audio device has a DAC chip in it.

They are needed to convert a digital signal into

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sound. DACs also fill the gaps between the digital signals as they are converted to audio signals to improve the sound heard over speakers and headphones. It is a little like making a picture a higher resolution by working out what colour pixel to put in the middle of two existing ones. To do this well requires significant processing power to run the algorithms that make the choices about the missing elements.

There is a problem with most DAC chips, though; they are not perfect devices. They tend to be mass produced in the millions and made down to a price, often becoming cheap and basic.

So adding a better quality DAC into a system— home audio or mobile—will improve the quality of the sound, and when stand-alone DACs started to come onto the market demand was immediately very strong.

The first thing we did when we began to explore the technology was to buy some DAC chips, string some circuitry around them and make it as good as it could be. However the DAC chips we found on the market were not good enough for a Chord product.

Around this time, I met an engineer called Rob Watts. He was messing about with DAC technology, but using a new approach with completely new chip technology. Rob showed me

a prototype DAC, and it sounded fantastic. His approach used FPGA (field programmable gate array) technology which gave his DAC design significantly more processing power than typical DAC chips.

However, much like when I designed my first amplifier, the component cost was very high. But, working with my philosophy of doing something well, whatever the cost, we took on Rob’s idea and used it to develop a range of products.

What impact did the DAC range of products have on the business?

Our first product was the DAC64. It was very successful when we launched it in the late 90s.

However, the real value from DAC technology came when we entered the mobile market around four years ago.

I was at an exhibition in Japan and was amazed by the enthusiasm for mobile technology. They were as enthusiastic as we were as electronics

“

It’s been double digit growth for Chord ever since

”

engineers 20 or 30 years ago. I realised we could do something in the mobile sector and when I returned I spoke with Rob and shortly after he had developed a mobile DAC. It was called the Hugo. We launched it to the market and haven’t looked back. It has been double digit growth for Chord ever since.

In fact, we launched a second mobile DAC, the Mojo, about a year ago. Without compromising on quality, we were able to sell this product at a lower price point and opened up Chord to a new sector of the market. So far, we have made around 40,000 of that product alone.

The business has taken off in recent years then, what is next for Chord?

We are just launching a new product category for Chord, the Poly. It is a high-resolution wireless network music player, streamer and SD card playback device—with wireless playback and control from smartphones—that is designed to work alongside the Mojo. It pulls together many technologies available in separate products, but, as I’m sure you can imagine, we are adding the Chord touch.

Chord Electronics Ltd www.chordelectronics.co.uk breakthrough, Spring 2017

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LET’S KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO CLIMATE CHANGE Self-proclaimed geek, Damon Hart-Davis, can’t be accused of aiming low. He genuinely believes the smart energy management technology he has developed will make its way onto 400 million radiators, and save homeowners billions, as he explained to Breakthrough magazine.

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amon has spent almost 30 years working as a ‘full stack’ software developer (the ‘back-end’ technologies that make an application work, and the 'front-end' interfaces which make an application easy for the user to work with) for high profile companies that include BP, RBS, Nomura and Lehman Brothers. He also created one of the UK’s first internet service providers in the early days of the internet.

Today, Damon’s expertise and energies have turned to carbon reduction. Not looking to start slowly, his latest project, OpenTRV (thermostatic radiator valve) aims to reduce the entire carbon footprint of the UK, and possibly the EU, by between 5 and 10%.

It is certainly an ambitious goal, but when Damon explains how it would be met, amazingly

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it seems quite achievable.

In the UK, studies have shown that between 10% and 20% of our carbon footprint is created by the processes needed to cover domestic space heating. And half of that is wasted through areas being heated when they are not occupied.

It is intelligent enough to build up patterns of occupancy - it can work out when a room is likely to be unoccupied for a while

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So, if that wasted energy can be significantly reduced, or indeed eliminated, the potential savings are enormous. Products like the Nest and Hive thermostats go some way towards achieving the energy reductions, but they do have drawbacks.

Their main weakness is that they monitor and control entire premises. They work by controlling the output of the boiler they are linked to. So, while they can turn heating systems down, or off, when premises is unoccupied, a significant amount of energy is still being wasted when only part of a property is occupied.

And so the OpenTRV project works on what is known as a zoning basis, controlling the temperature in individual rooms. This principle is not new. Independent timer based thermostats and even PIR (passive infrared) occupancy systems have been available for some years and are used in commercial buildings. But these systems do not learn, they do not adapt, and they are not ‘smart’.

Also, they are not generally available for domestic applications. This is where the Open TRV system comes in.

The product developed by Damon is a smart

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radiator valve which can be attached to each radiator and which reacts to its surroundings. Based on its local environment the smart valve can control the output of the radiator - independently of every other radiator in the building. In essence, it is a temperature sensing control unit that can deduce whether a room is empty or not. It is also intelligent enough to build up patterns of occupancy, so it can work out when a room is likely to be unoccupied for a while and can turn the heat down accordingly.

The valve draws on a number of sensed inputs to build a picture of what is going on around it. For example, the levels of ambient light can indicate occupancy when a light is flicked on, or curtains are drawn. It will learn over time too, building patterns unique to its setting. So whether the valve is jammed down the back of a sofa or near a sunny windowsill, it can calibrate itself and work effectively.

Technology of this capability might sound expensive, but a key objective for Damon was to develop a solution that isn’t. A typical domestic home can be fitted with a series of OpenTRVs for a similar cost to just one of the high-profile smart

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Our view is that smart technologies need to get out of people’s lives and get on with what they are doing in the background

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thermostats we mentioned earlier. To keep the costs low, the components Damon has chosen are simple—more than capable of doing the task needed of them, but not with capabilities beyond those required. Also, he purposely hasn’t incorporated the ability to control the devices from a phone. This decision was a strategic one which demonstrates Damon's understanding of how people will want smart devices to work. The early adopters taking up these new technologies want to ‘play’ with them, to interact with the devices, see how they operate and control them. But, to broaden their reach beyond the tech-loving early adopters requires a different approach.

“Smart technologies need to get out of people’s lives and get on with what they are doing in the background,” Damon explained. “Some things will be core to people's lives, but I don’t think managing their heating is one of them. And so if we can help people to save money, to be more comfortable than they were before and they don’t need to think about it, that will be the right thing to do.”

The ‘open’ aspect of the project’s name refers to Damon making the work they have done open

source, meaning that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance the software that has been created.

It's an interesting approach and one that is not often associated with commercial activities.

Explaining why he chose the open source option, Damon said: “What we are trying to achieve is ultimately for the public good. But it's not easy by any means. So I would prefer to err on the side of making my work available, to gain support from others rather than hiding it away on the off-chance that we might be able to make the third or fourth billion.”

Unfortunately, the OpenTRV products are not available to consumers just yet. The team have run several successful trials, but more testing is still needed to gather the level of data they need to demonstrate the system’s effectiveness to investors. For now, Damon can’t say exactly when the valves will be available. But he firmly believes they can meet their goal to be on 80% of Europe's home radiators, that's about 400 million, within the next 30 years.

OpenTRV opentrv.org.uk

breakthrough, Spring 2017

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BEATING THE DAILY GRIND Sometimes, the final solution to a manufacturing challenge can be a complete surprise and contrary to the accepted way. Which is why real world testing is so important as we discovered when we spoke to Andrew Gentle of DK Holdings.

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K Holdings is essentially the product of two organisations that date back to the 1950s—Diagrit Electrometallics and Kendia Diamond Products. The Diagrit side of the business focused on the creation of tooling for composites, construction and glass, while Kendia created more precision products for the engineering sector.

Initially operating as separate organisations, business was brisk for both companies through the 60s and 70s, with high profile clients such as the engineering group Sandvik. Then the oil crash came in the early 80s and work disappeared, literally overnight. And so the two companies came together to share common resources and manufacturing processes. The result was, and still is today, one of the largest manufacturers of specialist super abrasive tooling in the World.

DK holdings produce super abrasive tooling for use in a wide and sometimes fascinating range of applications, demonstrated by their involvement in the Bloodhound SSC land speed record project. Their largest sectors, however, remain the stone and engineering industries, that the company knew from its Diagrit and Kendia days.

Super abrasive tooling is often described as diamond tooling, but these days the technology has evolved beyond being purely diamond-based products. Yes, a lot of the tooling produced by the company is made from diamonds dug out of the ground, but increasingly this is being accompanied by synthetic diamonds and, for steel applications where diamond doesn’t perform so well, cubic boron nitride (CBN).

Adding value to fight price competition As we so often find when talking to manufacturing businesses here at Breakthrough magazine, DK Holdings is focused on bespoke manufacture. It has moved away from chasing business in some sectors, applications and product ranges, where cheap alternatives are being brought in from the emerging regions and where price has become the key driver for purchasing decisions. Where the business continues to excel is in applications where technical input and support and longterm product life are important. Today, these are attributes that are seeing an increase in demand within the engineering sector, in industries working with composite materials in particular.

The situations where DK Holdings can add that value are usually led by the material, the process or the application. It's not uncommon for new materials, particularly a composite material, to be developed before consideration is given to how it will be machined. With nothing available off the shelf, specialist knowledge is required to develop a new abrasive tool to work with such materials.

Clearly, what needs to be done to the material

It would be a real challenge to provide a more cost effective alternative has an impact on the tool and how it operates.

A sophisticated tool might be required to drill, machine and ream a hole in one operation. Or the process may have an impact—a tool that drills five holes a day will be very different to one that drills 50,000, for example.

In every tool design, there are three components where the variables need to be considered. Firstly, there is the abrasive, what it is made from and its form—this will be governed by the material to be machined, the levels of abrasion required and the expected tool life.

The tool's shape will also have an effect on the abrasion and life—while also being driven by the machinery and process being used. And there will be a bonding agent that holds the abrasive to the tool—considerations here include life, heat management and the desired tool performance.

It's a complex interplay that has to be balanced for each application, especially in very involved machining applications or where unfamiliar materials are being machined.

This dynamic came into play recently when DK Holdings was approached by a customer looking to improve a cast iron finishing system. The client required a solution that would remove casting marks from newly formed components and fine tune the surface finish.

The key driver for the project was the life of the tool with the cost of the tool also being an important consideration. The abrasives used by the client before approaching DK Holdings were only lasting a short time, but they were very low cost. Even if the company could develop a tool that outlasted the client's old solution by a factor of 100, it would still need to come in at a relatively low cost to be financially viable.

So it would be a challenge to provide a more cost effective alternative for this application.

However, the cheap tools already in use posed the customer a more pressing problem. Because the tools wore down quickly, the material that was worn away would end up as dust, and this has to be managed with extraction. Then, as the old tools wore, their diameter reduced and as the tool shrunk adjustments to the process were constantly required, including to the guarding around the tool.

The final solution took a significant amount of trial and error to identify. The choice of abrasive was the element that was hardest to fix. The

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Sometimes you can’t beat testing something in a real world scenario development team at DK Holdings was faced with something it hadn’t done before, and so prototype tools were created using a broad range of abrasive options—until they finally found one that worked as the project required.

Even Formula One teams have to test in the real world It may sound unscientific, but sometimes you can’t beat testing something in a real world scenario. You only have to look at Formula 1, for example, which is seen as a pinnacle of engineering. The teams spend millions on prototyping and theoretical testing in simulated environments and yet still get unexpected results when a new component is attached to a car and sent out onto a track.

In the case of the cast iron finishing system, real life testing meant that the team at DK Holdings ended up with a solution that would never have been considered in a paper exercise.

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The team are careful to guard the exact details but did explain that the abrasive material that was chosen, and its format, would not have been identified as an option based on theoretical analysis, or indeed the experience of many, many past projects. And so, it demonstrates the value of trial and error well.

The client was delighted with the new solution.

The product was comparable regarding direct cost, but it had massive health and safety benefits, with significantly reduced levels of dust being created and it greatly simplified the guarding requirements.

The time and resources DK Holdings devoted to the development have paid added dividends as what was initially a one-off product for the customer has been sold to other clients for similar applications.

So, DK Holdings offers yet another example which demonstrates that, while British manufacturing struggles to compete in a wide range of high volume markets, the value we can bring to bespoke, complex applications remains second to none.

DK Holdings Ltd www.dk-holdings.co.uk

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Adapt or Die As young people get used to a new way of working, manufacturing and engineering businesses will need to adapt to attract the best new talent, according to Publisher, Sue Nelson.

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go to visit clients as part of my job, as I always have done, and in the last two years that has mostly been in London and the South East. I used to arrive at their offices in a high street, business park or industrial estate, but not anymore. Now I go to their co-working space or to their tech hub. I’m not talking about manufacturing or engineering companies who are pretty much in the same places they’ve always been, but those involved in tech innovation, software or the services that surround it.

These places usually have a communal reception desk, closely followed by a café and/or bar at the entrance. The WeWork chain of tech hubs offers free beer, coffee and soft drinks to its members and many others have similar concessions. The ‘hot desks’ are not really much in evidence. Yes, there are glass walled offices you can rent, or rows of desks where you can plug in your laptop and phone, but most people prefer to sit on a settee or in a comfy chair to work.

Some have the most extraordinary interiors, with every type of connectivity and working environment catered for. The up and coming Croydon Tech City, has a great space called TMRW (pronounced Tomorrow), where old fashioned phone booths allow sound proof mobile phone conversations, mixed with large open spaces for community activities and discussions. There are ping pong tables and after hours yoga classes and what is striking is the strong sense of identity among the members, even if they prefer not to engage too much, they feel very much as if they belong. It would seem this co-working movement aspires to a sense of community, collaboration, learning, and sustainability.

Places such as the Hospital Club in Covent Garden, along with many others, offer a huge array of events not just for entertainment but to learn new skills or get connected to peers.

Regular presenters will be companies such as Google or FaceBook or experienced business gurus, lawyers or investors.

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These membership-based workspaces are encouraging diverse groups of freelancers, remote workers, and other independent professionals to work together in a shared, communal setting and they are thriving and growing very quickly. WeWork was said to be valued at $5billion last year.

A tech hub is normally open 24 hours a day and the members are very flexible about their work day – they might put in a very long shift if they have a deadline or decide to take a break in the middle of the day and go to the gym. They can choose whether they want to work in a quiet space so they can focus, or in a more collaborative space with shared tables where interaction is encouraged.

The cultures are very interesting too, because it seems to be the norm to help each other out, with clever shared social media platforms, where

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Young people are beginning to get used to a much more fluid way of working

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members can post problems, or requests for information or contacts. The variety of workers in the space means that coworkers have unique skill sets that they can provide to other community members.

So what are the implications for traditional companies such as those in the engineering and manufacturing sector? Even though the co-working movement has its origins among freelancers, entrepreneurs, and the tech industry, it’s increasingly relevant for a broader range of people and organisations. The real issue though, is that young people are beginning to get used to a much more fluid way of working, and the industrial sectors will need to work out how they can attract those types of employees when others are offering that flexibility.

If your company is involved in manufacturing, toolmaking, engineering design or developing new products, you should be getting government cash for all that hard work.

Some people call it R&D tax credits, we just call it “cash for innovation”.

Get what you’re owed at www.breakthroughfunding.com

CASH FOR INNOVATION? YEAH. WE DO THAT.