​Digital Manufacturing Success at Smart Factory Expo

The Hartree Centre shared its digital transformation success stories and opportunities at Smart Factory Expo, Liverpool, 13-14 Nov 2019.

As part of Digital Manufacturing Week 2019, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Hartree Centre exhibited and gave talks at ​Smart Factory Expo in collaboration with Invest Liverpool, Sci-Tech Daresbury, Made Smarter, Sensor City and SMEs Brainboxes and CNC Robotics. Invest Liverpool hosted a series of talks across the two days featuring various topics of interest across the span of digital manufacturing, including robotics, data analytics and AI.

On Wednesday, Michael Gleaves, Deputy Director, discussed how SMEs can access the Hartree Centre’s expertise in supercomputing, data analytics and AI, and introduced the new Industrial Digitalisation Accelerator collaboration with Siemens and Atos.​

On Thursday, Business Development Manager Angela Walsh gave an introduction to STFC and an overview of Hartree Centre’s capabilities in supercomputing, data analytics and AI followed by Dale King, who works with Emerging Technologies at Airbus. Dale explained how Airbus has been working with the Hartree Centre and several other international partners on Automated Wing Tank Inspection. Detecting potential defects or anomalies inside a wing is a complex problem contained in a confined space – Airbus are trying to tackle this using a combination of robotics and deep learning AI technologies. ​

Later in the afternoon, Luke Vanstone from STFC Business and Innovations gave his Top Tips for Digital Prototyping – which including ensuring you understand your audience and knowing your technology inside o​ut – and talked about new virtual design capabilities at the STFC Campus Technology Hub. 

Luke was joined by Shay O’Carroll from Imagin3D, an SME based at Sci-Tech Daresbury that, amongst other achievements, has been working with the Hartree Centre to develop a virtual data centre tour featuring supercomputer Scafell Pike. Shay also shared collaborative ambitions to develop the demo into a full digital twin of the data centre – so watch this space!