Mould tooling technology company
Surface Generationhas raised £450,000 in a recent funding round with contributions received from
Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION)and
Bank of.
OION invested £140,000, which was matched by Bank of Scotland Corporate’s growth capital team, and the remaining balance was provided by previous individual investors of the Rutland-based business.
Surface Generation’s technology creates easily changeable moulds for carbon fibre composite tooling for use in industries such as aerospace. They can be used to make components for manufacturing processes that previously required individually created, expensive moulds.
For example, Near-net Shape Pin Tooling technology is used to produce expendable ceramic and polymeric patterns for prototyping, while Subtractive Pin Tooling technology is used to create metallic tools for production components.
Ben Halford, chief executive officer of Surface Generation, said: ‘Our reusable mould system is especially cost-effective for short manufacturing runs of high-end components. If you are building an aeroplane, for example, then you may only require a few hundred of certain parts and having to create individual conventional moulds is very expensive and time-consuming.
‘When a new design is being prototyped, inevitably there are changes to the precise specification of components as the prototype is perfected. Surface Generation’s technology fits perfectly with this process as moulds can be reconfigured and immediately re-used.’
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