The E&T Innovation Awards recognise and celebrate the very best in global innovation across the breadth of science, engineering and technology.  To be short-listed in the IET Manufacturing 4.0 Award category was amazing for our team.  Today we learnt at the Awards ceremony, held at the IET, Savoy Place, that Cambridge Precision Ltd had actually won!

The innovation we entered was the project led by Andrew Barnard, developing a cobotic hub to streamline elements of our digital manufacturing processes.  This project  pioneered the development of a cobot / five axis ‘set and run’ system working with our supply partner Mills CNC and CPL are the first precision engineering company in the UK to be using Doosan cobots in the way we are.

The objectives underlying this project were both H.R. related (increasing engineering job satisfaction) and commercial (increasing quality and consistency of output on high volume projects).

The game changing innovation of this project is in the integration of two complex digital machines (cobot and multi axis machining centre) the design of loading benches to enable the manufacturing process and the creation of automated support and audit checks to allow 24/7 operation.  The initial goal was to support less complex jobs but we have now also realised the benefit in using the cobots on jobs with very long run times – again freeing up skilled workers to programme and load other jobs and let them run concurrently. Our development of this combined technology is a first and we are thrilled that this innovation has been recognised and celebrated by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Lyn Disley, Communications Manager, CPL, received the award on behalf of all the team and thanked the judges for this outstanding accolade.