The UK’s Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC) has opened an advanced engineering technology centre at their Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire. The centre will provide to UK businesses of all sizes, including small start-ups, providing them with affordable access to more than £2 million worth of advanced engineering technology, including advanced 3D printing and rapid prototype assistance.
The centre has already been used to develop a framing system designed to help with shelter building in refugee camps.
‘The new Campus Technology Hub (CTH) has one purpose – to provide companies with affordable access to the best skills and facilities in engineering R&D so that they can solve their technology challenges to better compete on a national and international level,’ said Professor Susan Smith, head of STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory. ‘We can help entrepreneurs, small and medium companies, and more established businesses turn their brilliant ideas into reality.’
Start-up company Taylor Garfit is one of the first companies to use the centre. They are developing new technology for providing humanitarian shelters for refugee scenarios and international disasters where rapid deployment is critical. ‘Durability, weight and cost are all key to the success of our framing technology and, thanks to the CTH, we have been through 16 variants of our prototype in very quick succession,’ Garfit said. ‘Over a six-month period, we have been able to move from concept stage to a position where we are now ready to start field trials, a timescale we certainly could not have achieved without the assistance of CTH.’
About the Science and Technology Facilities Council
The STFC are a world-leading multi-disciplinary science organisation, and their goal is to deliver economic, societal, scientific and international benefits to the UK and its people – and more broadly to the world. Their strength comes from Their distinct but interrelated functions:
- Universities: They support university-based research, innovation and skills development in astronomy, particle physics, nuclear physics, and space science
- Scientific Facilities: They provide access to world-leading, large-scale facilities across a range of physical and life sciences, enabling research, innovation and skills training in these areas
- National Campuses: They work with partners to build National Science and Innovation Campuses based around their National Laboratories to promote academic and industrial collaboration and translation of their research to market through direct interaction with industry
- Inspiring and Involving: They help ensure a future pipeline of skilled and enthusiastic young people by using the excitement of their sciences to encourage wider take-up of STEM subjects in school and future life (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
They support an academic community of around 1,700 in particle physics, nuclear physics, and astronomy including space science, who work at more than 50 universities and research institutes in the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States, including a rolling cohort of more than 900 PhD students.
