Manufacturing

Orbital Marine Power’s O2 has begun feeding power into the national grid from the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney. The floating turbine, claimed by Orbital to be the worlds largest, has been fabricated using ship-building technology in Dundee, and is anchored in the Fall of Warness. 74m long O2 is Orbital’s first commercial turbine, following 15 years of UK ...

Innovate UK has approved funding for the £1.5m ‘Silicon anode battery for rapid electrification’ (Sabre) project, intended to improve energy density in electric vehicle grade lithium ion batteries. The money, via Faraday Battery Challenge at UK Research and Innovation, will go to Nexeon, Britishvolt and University College London (UCL) to deliver Li-ion test cells with a silicon anode material. “Silicon has a ...

STMicroelectronics has manufactured its first 200mm silicon-carbide bulk wafers at its Norrköping Sweden facility. “The transition to 200mm SiC wafers will bring substantial advantages to our automotive and industrial customers as they accelerate the transition towards electrification,” said ST president of automotive Marco Monti. The company is claiming high quality with minimal crystal-dislocation defects through expertise in SiC ingot growth technology ...

STMicroelectronics will procure 50% of the energy for its Bouskoura site in Morocco from renewable sources by 2022, compared to 1% in 2020. The electricity of 12 wind turbines in North Morocco will be fed into Morocco’s national power grid and then purchased by ST. These are on a 10ha wind farm near the coast at Oualidia, built by InnoVent and planned ...

TSMC is looking at building a fab in Germany. “We are currently doing reviews on Germany seriously, but it’s still in very early stages,” TSMC chairman Mark Liu told shareholders earlier today, “we continue to communicate with our major clients in Germany to see whether this is most important and effective for our clients.” Liu added that “it’s too early ...

South Tyneside sacrificial anode manufacture Metec UK has signed contracts worth over £6.5m, to supply Dogger Bank Wind Farm phases A and B, and an off-shore substation in France. “We’re delighted to win these latest contracts, it’s great news for South Tyneside, the North East and the UK,” said Metec commercial manager Graeme Crow (pictured). “Offshore wind projects and developments ...

Paris start-up Silina has developed a way to curve hundreds of imaging sensors at the same time, simplifying associated external optics, it said. In nature, most vision systems use curved retinas with the curved retina allowing a single simple lens to provide a wide field-of-view and good image quality from a compact optical system, according to the company, while flat electronic sensors ...

  The benefits of brushless DC (BLDC) motors are clear, and they are used in many applications within vehicles and elsewhere. However, while more powerful, lighter and more efficient they remain more expensive and require more complex control than brushed DC motors. This means that consideration must be given to which motor type is the most appropriate for each application ...

Lockheed Martin has officially opened its Spacecraft Test, Assembly and Resource (STAR) Center, an advanced manufacturing facility to expand Orion spacecraft production. The STAR Center, says the company, will expand manufacturing, assembly and testing capacity for NASA’s Orion spacecraft programme and support future space exploration. The 55,000 square-foot space – in Titusville, Florida – will be a “digitally-transformed factory of ...

Farnell has added professional-grade 3D printers from Barcelona-based BCN3D Technologies to its portfolio. “3D printing is becoming extremely important in the research and development and industry, and BCN3D are right at the forefront of developing olutions to overcome challenges associated with 3D printing,” said Farnell head of tool and productions supplies James McGregor. Included are the Epsilon W50 and W27 mid-sized ...