Public Funding for Druck Limited

Baker Hughes Waygate Technologies group as a technology leader in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), with 125-years domain expertise, has been serving hundreds of leading brands from multiple industries, with a strong focus on battery industries in recent years. As a result of listening to GigaFactories across the globe, Waygate Technologies understands that battery quality and manufacturing defects are significant risk to EV vehicles safety. The use of X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is well established in containing the manufacturing escapes, defects and controlling quality and safety. X-ray Computed Tomography inspection machines, such as the 'V|tome|x M metrology edition', are present in around 60 GigaFactories world-wide. While Waygate Technologies machines offer state of the art metrological capabilities and certification, the key consideration in today's manufacturing environment is balancing the scan time and throughput. Faster scanning results in lower resolution and scan quality significantly deteriorates. This makes the use of CT more economic, but the cells produced are often scanned with a bigger voxel size than certain defects, thus key defects could be missed and confidence in quality assurance is reduced. Waygate Technologies is developing multiple solutions to improve the image quality and drastically reduce the time needed for scanning. This is a key pillar for reaching quality in battery manufacturing during GigaFactories in ramp-up and reducing financial liabilities because of unforeseen quality issues from batteries whilst already in-service products such as EVs. Resulting improvements and insights are expected to be further leveraged by anonymously aggregating them in our secure cloud solution InspectionWorks. This will cascade quality insights from different cell designs, manufacturing lines, sites, and manufacturers to create ever more comprehensive datasets to lift up UK players more effectively in the battery sector without IP or access risk. Current approaches of Waygate Technologies to improve scanning quality performance stated above include AI-based novel noise reduction methods. To ensure these adhere to our rigorous quality and metrology standards, we will collaborate with the UK's National Physics Laboratory. Through the creation of a robust test protocol, validation dataset, and data processing and analysis pipeline, this project will enable Waygate Technologies to test the generalisation of its image enhancement method and potentially optimise system parameters to promote measurement accuracy. For us and our customers worldwide trusting us as their partner of choice for battery inspection, we will make sure to optimise for robustness, speed, critical feature retention, and quantify key parameter performance.

The FETCH project is led by Moog together with the partners Bath University, Cranfield University, sensor specialists Druck/Curtiss Wright and bearing specialist Carter Manufacturing. The project will develop and demonstrate a fuel control system for aircraft hydrogen gas turbines together with non-fueldraulic geometry electro mechanical actuation systems.

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There is a need in the Oil & Gas industry for a reliable method for accurate measurement of pressure and temperature (P&T) down the length of an oil well. The device must be robust enough to withstand the harsh environment with low drift over time. The consortium will develop a sensor head and optical interrogator suitable for downhole measurement of P&T. Electronic instruments have limited lifetime at elevated temperature, therefore this technology represents an enabler allowing a higher percentage of the hydrocarbons in the reservoir to be economically extracted. The project aims to deliver a system demonstrator, which if successful would lead to industrial packaging and field trials. The feasibility of an optical sensor for high-accuracy pressure measurements up to 400°C has been demonstrated at GE Sensing. However, significant innovation is required to deliver a robust and cost-effective solution. Oxsensis will develop a multi-channel interrogator to interrogate the sensor. GE Sensing will develop a chip to optically match the Oxsensis interrogator, packaged for down-hole deployment. Accuracy, stability & lifetime will be tested at representative pressures & temperatures.