Renishaw
Renishaw FDC
Simon Briggs and Sarah Lewis stand inside the Fabrication Development Centre with one of many groups of pupils to use the facility.
In 1979, not yet in operation for a sixth full year, Renishaw PLC hired its very first apprentice. Though just the mere beginnings of what is now one of the UK’s leading engineering firms, Renishaw had initiated a strategy it would continue to build on, and 40 years later, amid a serious shortage of skills, announced the latest piece of the puzzle.
Such was the importance of this latest development, Renishaw invited media and partners to its site in Miskin, South Wales, which it purchased in 2012 from Bosch. The company has since pumped £45m worth of investment into the facility, employed 330 bodies, created a Healthcare Centre of Excellence, and has planning permission secured for a sizeable extension. It is also the main location for the production of its additive manufacturing platforms, including the RenAM 500Q four laser machine.
Company-wide, Renishaw has a global headcount of more than 4,500, up from 1,850 in September 2009, and with around 2,800 of those deployed within the UK. It’s a company experiencing a solid rate of growth, thanks in large part to the decision to establish a facility in South Wales. Here, it has opened itself up to a new engineering talent pool, one in which it doesn’t take competition from the likes of GKN, Rolls Royce, and Airbus, like it must in Gloucestershire.
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Renishaw FDC Miskin
Inside the Fabrication Development Centre.
Yet concerns about a skills gap remain. After more than 18 months in operation, Renishaw announced the launch of its Fabrication Development Centre (FDC) in Miskin, a 250-square metre space with full-time technician support, tailored for use by primary, secondary and A-Level students, designed to address that issue.
“Everybody is well aware of the skills shortages that we face in the engineering technology sectors,” Chris Pocket, Head of Communications, Renishaw noted. “Whilst, the technology sector can do a little about the shortages, we can collectively take control of the future. And we believe that the Fabrication Development Centre represents a potential education centre model for others in the sector.”
The skills shortage is endemic across the world, per UNESCO’s ‘Youth and skills: Putting education to work’ paper, commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012. Generally, there are concerns with the employability of people aged between 16-24, Renishaw personnel mentioning on more than one occasion that engineering alumni have often expressed a wealth of academic knowledge but haven’t been so capable putting that into practice. UNESCO’s report stated: “Skills gaps are constraining companies’ ability to grow, innovate, deliver products and services on time, meet quality standards and meet environmental and social requirements in countries where they operate.” Its recommendations included ‘experimentation on what works best to help young people learn employability skills by doing’; and ‘a change of attitude of employers, so they view education and training systems as part of their value chains.’
Renishaw took heed of those suggestions, and in August 2016 welcomed the likes of Cowbridge Comprehensive and Radyr Comprehensive to trial the FDC. In 2017, 500 primary school pupils and 1,170 secondary school pupils used the FDC. So far this year, it has hosted 600 primary school pupils and 550 secondary school pupils. But this is only the start.
Nearly 20% of jobs in the UK (around 5.7 million) are in some way related to engineering, and so the need for skills to fill those roles is palpable. Renishaw believes there exists a need to double the number of graduates and apprentices entering the engineering industry, and forecasts 186,000 people with engineering skillsets will be needed annually through 2024.
Renishaw Miskin machine shop
Renishaw's machine shop at its Miskin facility.
The mission has been outlined, but the challenges that face Renishaw range from the economical to the more ideological. Renishaw acknowledges the geographical fluctuation in employment rates and access to talent; the struggle many schools face with financial support; the apparent snobbery towards apprenticeships from the higher classes; and teachers’ lack of knowledge or flexibility within the government curricula as key issues it needs to overcome. And so it has established the FDC within a real-life industrial setting in the hope to not only educate the local students, but also convert them.
“The power, fundamentally, of the Fabrication Development Centre is it’s condensed. There are quite a lot of education centres out there, but this one we believe is unique in the UK,” emphasised Pockett. “Not only can you have a high-quality experience in terms of curriculum teaching, either from teachers that teach within the facility, or from our own staff, but then you can contextualise that, you can see the products being made here and how those impact on daily lives, whether that be products used in smartphone manufacturing, or jet engine manufacturing. You can see real people making things. I think that’s the real power.”
Although most of their time will be spent in the two workshops that make up the FDC, the students also get a whistle-stop tour around the Miskin facility, where they see for themselves what the latest engineering technology can achieve. Between all Renishaw sites, the company expects to manufacture around a million components per month. Its machine shop at Miskin, packed to the brim with subtractive manufacturing technology from the likes of Mazak, as well as its own machining and measurement tools, contributes immeasurably to that level of production. The set-up is manned by 12 people per shift, with up to 36 machines in operation, serving the high and low-volume manufacture of bespoke and one-off parts.
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Renishaw AM production line Miskin
A glimpse of the production line for Renishaw's RenAM 500 machines
They also see each stage of the production line for the 500M and 500Q additive manufacturing systems. The children are taken step-by-step, from the build of the base and chamber, responsible for doing the powder before it enters the machine; the input of the electricals; how the hopper and gas feed system are built in; the stage at which the laser is cut and is fed from the power unit through a thick yellow cable and into the system; before the final phase where the software is loaded and the laser tested. Within each phase, pressure tests are carried out to unsure no faults are carried down the line and cause disruption. Such is this considered approach, it takes six weeks, currently, to complete the build for each system. Renishaw also explained it is building to order, not to stock, as different customers require differing specifications – those purchasing the 500Q 4-laser tend to also want a higher temperature build chamber, for example.
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Renishaw medical Miskin
Medical applications of Renishaw's additive manufacturing equipment.
Other features of the tour include Renishaw’s Neurological Products division and its dental and medical operations, which enables the company to flex its additive manufacturing muscles and adequately demonstrate the vast capabilities its technology boasts. The company’s Neurological products, the neuroinspire software; the neuromate robotic arm; and the neuroinfuse drug delivery system equip the Miskin facility’s mock surgical theatre, used to train surgeons in a most realistic environment – the same type of lighting is used, and the flooring, with colour coded features to represent which areas are sterile, is also identical. neuroinspire is Renishaw’s software platform for surgical planning, while the neuromate stereotactic robot is an enabler for a range of neurosurgical procedures. Around 30 are installed around the world, 9 in the UK, and deliver quick, precise targeting in procedures that concern deep brain stimulation (DBS) and stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG), among others. The neuroinfuse drug delivery system is a product which ‘bypasses the blood-brain-barrier’, and is considered by the company to be a step change in the treatment of neurological conditions. neuroinfuse, meanwhile, is put into use after the surgeon has drilled a small hole into the cranium. The inner and outer guide tubes are inserted one after the other, their position verified, before the catheter is connected. A 4-needle application set kinematically locks onto an external 3D printed titanium port, allowing independent fluid paths and flow rates through four separate catheters. The patient thus receives therapeutics to the targeted area, treating their condition. The plan is for this drug delivery system to be applicable to any patient suffering any neurological disease, but as yet has only been tested with Cerebral Dopamine Neurotrophic Factor (CDNF) drugs on sufferers of Parkinson’s Disease. In the dental and medical lab, Renishaw showcases a range of applications of its AM250 and AM 500 machines, including copings, bridges, crowns and implants.
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The neuromte stereotactic robot in Renishaw's Neurological Products division, which acts as a realistic environment for trainee surgeons to hone their skills.
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Renishaw's neuroinfuse drug delivery system is being used in clinical trials for the treatment of Parkinson's Disease.
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Close up of the additively manufacture titanium port, which helps enable the neuroinfuse to deliver therapeutics to the patient.
Renishaw sees healthcare applications, as high-tech as the neuroinfuse drug delivery system, and as rudimentary as a 3D printed dental model, as the perfect way to demonstrate the potential impact of its additive manufacturing machines. Moreover, that the Miskin facility as a whole is the perfect setting to encourage schoolchildren to embark on careers in engineering. Radyr Comprehensive was one of the first schools on board at the FDC, ‘testing it in anger’, helping Renishaw to refine the workshops. Currently, the school has three year 9 groups timetabled to come to Miskin on a weekly basis. They also have year 11, year 12, and year 13 pupils making regular visits to the FDC.
“And what that has done,” begins Richard Jenkins, Assistant Headteacher at Radyr Comprehensive, “is not only inspired them to continue with [the science, technology, engineering, and maths] subjects, but it has also exposed them to what is manufacturing in the 21st century. Where before children were reliant on their hand skills, their design skills, the message is when they come to Renishaw if they can think it, if they can imagine it, if they can draw it, they can make it because there is the machinery here, the technology here, to take that to a new level.”
“Part of getting excited and engaged about science and technology is to find out what we can do with this technology now, the technology in this building, and the imagination you guys bring into the world of tomorrow, that high-technology, low-carbon world where you lot are going to build and live in. That’s the exciting bit for us to try and start the process,” added Andy Green OBE, the driver of the Bloodhound SSC supersonic land vehicle, addressing a group of schoolchildren in attendance at the event. Green was the day’s special guest, there to not only mark the launch of the FDC, but also to make public an education partnership with Renishaw. The Bloodhound Project joins Aerospace Bristol, Greenpower, and Festomane as supporters of the FDC, and Green was keen to highlight the development of such a vehicle is only possible with the kind of technology that fills Renishaw’s Miskin facility.
“The sort of technology we’re dealing with in this building, is the sort of technology that enables us right now, today, to build the world’s most extraordinary straight-line racing car, the Bloodhound SSC. The technology in terms of the precision measurement, precision manufacturing, that allows us at Bloodhound to make every single one of the 3,500 bespoke, specialist components.”
Those 3,500 parts make up a vehicle that Green and his colleagues hope will not only surpass the Land Speed Record (760mph), which Green currently holds as a result of his efforts with Thrust SSC in 1997, but reach 1,000mph. The project has been underway for nine and a half years, and last October finally tested the car at Newquay Airport, UK, where it reached 210mph. This October, it will again be tested, this time on a race track at Hakskeen Pan, South Africa, where the team will target 500mph.
It has leaned on Renishaw’s additive manufacturing capabilities for two of the most critical components in achieving its ambitions. The nose has been made largely from carbon fibre, but the tip is 3D printed in titanium on the AM250 platform. As is the steering wheel that Green will grip as he attempts to smash his own world record. It is the result of three years of design iteration and build layouts, and has been printed in 9,500 titanium layers of 30 microns in a 120-hour build. Printed at an angle, it requires a host of support structures which act as anchors to prevent distortion, a big concern as lower parts of the steering wheel begin to cool, while the higher sector is still being additively manufactured.
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On display during the tour of Renishaw's Miskin facility, was the additively manufactured steering wheel with supports still attached (left), the finished product (centre), and the nose cone (in the Project Bloodhound team member's hand).
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The 3D printed components in the Bloodhound SSC.
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Speaking honestly about the steering wheel, Green said Renishaw is taking a massive risk by, not only being open about its involvement in its manufacture, but also by having its branding on the part. The car is set to complete 12 miles in around 40 seconds, or a mile every three and a half seconds. Any faults to the functionality of the steering wheel, though the direct responsibility of Bloodhound’s engineering team, would be life-threatening and have Renishaw’s name on it. But the company would have you know that’s a risk worth taking. The breaking of the Land Speed Record by reaching 1,000mph is not only a validation of its technology, but the impact it might have on future generations is huge for Renishaw.
Two members of the Bloodhound team stood at a counter to explain additive manufacturing’s role in the project, while just over their shoulder was the evidence of Renishaw and Bloodhound’s education collaboration. A replica of the supersonic car was surrounded by schoolchildren hanging on the every word of the tutor before them. Further east of the hall, another class of schoolchildren played with the small Bloodhound SSC models they had made that day.
“You saw our logo out there that says ‘engineering adventure’ around it, we’ve chosen that phrase very carefully. It’s about telling an adventure story around an astonishing piece of engineering, specifically getting to 1,000mph and telling the stories, the science and technology and people who delivered it,” remarked Green. “That’s the story we want to tell.
“We’ve got them excited, what happens then? That’s when hundreds of hundreds of companies who are seeing the challenge and seeing the opportunity, Renishaw being a prime example, that’s where the kids go next. ‘What can I do in my area? How does that technology relate to the real world? How will I see that in 10, 20 years? How can I get involved?’ Those are the questions that we then have to answer. That’s not Bloodhound, we can’t do that, that’s the sort of job that Renishaw can do.”
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Renishaw coding Miskin
Coding LED board inside the FDC featuring a programmed Bloodhound SSC and the Renishaw brand.
That’s the sort of job Renishaw is trying to do. In the FDC on the day of its official launch was a year 9 class under the supervision of Simon Briggs, who runs the centre, and his colleague Sarah Lewis. They were in the process of building BBC micro bit buggies in a room equipped with Ultimaker 2+ and 2+ Extended machines, as well as a Formlabs Form 2. The desktop machines are there to teach them the concept of 3D printing, manufacturing key rings they designed earlier that day, while the BBC micro bit project helps them learn how to code. In the centre of the room was a Goblin Car, which comes in kit form and sees the pupils build it across two days, before racing it in competition with other schools. All in, it serves as an intro to engineering technology that will hopefully enamour schoolchildren in South Wales and nearby South-West of England, part of the next-generation, and best hope of shortening the skills gap. In a perfect world for Renishaw, the FDC will serve as a springboard to spark hundreds and thousands of careers in engineering. Last year, the company took on 108 engineering and software work placements; 60 summer placements; 40 industrial placements; 45 apprenticeships; 43 graduates, totalling more than 300 work experience engagements. Additionally, the company engaged with 8,000 young people, aided by 130+ STEM ambassadors – a third of which are female – but it still isn’t enough. This year, Renishaw will step up these efforts, and the FDC will play an integral part.
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A row of desktop 3D printers on which students print key rings during their visit to the FDC.
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A Goblin Car inside the FDC.
“With companies already struggling to recruit skilled candidates, it is important to get more young people interested in STEM subjects at GCSE and A-Level,” commented Simon Briggs, Education and Outreach Officer at Renishaw. “Creating engaging educational experiences for pupils at a young age can be essential to their selection of the subject at degree or apprenticeship level.
“The Fabrication Development Centre not only gives pupils a chance to escape the classroom, but it also enables them to grasp the link between the school curriculum and industry. They can take part in motivating workshops that complement the exam specification and give them a better understanding of the career opportunities available to them in the future.”
When Renishaw welcomed its very first apprentice at the end of the 1970s, it probably didn't foresee the steep decline the UK manufacturing sector was about to experience, and it's likely it certainly didn't foresee that 40 years on there would be more engineering jobs than there were employable people to fill them. But the company's commitment to addressing that issue has matched its growth over the years. Last week's announcements, the launch of the FDC and the Bloodhound education alliance, is the latest demonstration of said commitment, and one it hopes will inspire its peers as they attempt to bridge the engineering technology skills gap.
