Digital Manufacturing, an Insight into the Future

Thursday 30th May 2024

SMDH Digital Manufacturing, an Insight into the Future

at Photocentric Ltd, Titan House, 20 Titan Dr, Peterborough PE1 5XN

SMDH attendees:

Cara Roberts SMDH Business Development Manager

Photocentric attendees:

Sally Tipping New Business Director

Paul Holt Managing Director

Peter Butler IT systems Manager and Website Developer

Hanifeh Zarezadeh 3D Product Manager

Ed Barlow Lead Engineer

Kevin Martin Technical Sales Engineer

Dr Rob Young Lead Chemist & Lead Battery Scientist

Explore the reality of the Photocentric digital journey, straight from the coal face.

Uncover the untapped potential of your manufacturing data and explore funding.

Dive headfirst into the Photocentric Lighthouse Project for a hands-on experience of cutting-edge 3D printing tech.

Organisations:

Photocentric is the inventor of LCD 3D printing and manufacturer of 3D printers, 3D polymers and 3D printed parts, with unique abilities to make large format LCD printers. Currently developing autonomous digital manufacturing processes, Jeni.

SMDH is focussed on enabling SME’s access digital manufacturing tools. The UK Government is giving manufacturing SMEs a boost to their “productivity and competitiveness” through the Smart Manufacturing Data Hub (SMDH). The new hub and testbed is led by Ulster University and backed by £50m of government funds and business co-investment. The funding is part of the £300m Made Smarter Innovation Challenge, designed to support the development and increased use of new and existing industrial digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

10.00 Arrival

Arrival and greeting from the teams.

10.15 Introduction and Welcome - Sally Tipping

Housekeeping and introduction to Photocentric.

10.25 Introduction to SMDH - Cara Roberts, SMDH

10.55 Photocentric’s Journey to Digital manufacturing- Paul Holt

Why we needed to be a digital manufacturer.

How we installed Oracle, but then failed to implement MRP.

11.15 How we made digital happen- Peter Butler

How we went about MRP implementation.

What were the struggles and how we overcame them.

What are the benefits of being a digital manufacturer.

11.25 Tour of the facilities split into four groups visiting four stations in turn

A. Batteries & Space- why 3D print batteries and why print in space

B. Printer assembly How we make the Opus, Magna and Titan 3D printers

C. Making and filling photopolymer

D. Titan, Magna and Opus 3D print farms

12.15 Lunch

Served on mezzanine with Photocentric staff and exhibits to discuss

12.40 Lighthouse launch-

What does digital manufacturing mean-

Digital Factory standards-

How to develop digital skills-

14.15 Why 3D print- Hanifeh Zarezadeh

What are the advantages over tooling? Which industries and applications can benefit the most? How do you design for additive?

14.35 Jeni, autonomous digital manufacturing- Ed Barlow

Jeni was developed as part of £3m of Innovate projects. The low carbon, autonomous, manufacturing process uses arrays of LCD SLA printers to make thousands of parts a day without human intervention, delivering parts every 30 seconds. It is the alternative to injection moulding.

14.50 Questions

15.00 Depart