Faculty of Technology

Join the Club to Share Ideas

One of the ways entrepreneurs and small companies can benefit from SEKE is by becoming part of a network of people using the technology at each of the sites. Networking and cluster creation can be highly beneficial, especially for smaller organisations, on the basis that the sum of a grouping can often be greater than its constituent parts.

Treated as "clubs" these groupings cover a number of technology themes including design for manufacture, reverse engineering and rapid tooling. They are a good opportunity for users to meet their peers at events,  discuss applications and problem solving, review new technologies and seek advice on an informal basis from SEKE partners.

Worldwide Links Enable Best Practice Benchmarking

Design and manufacturing innovation is a constantly evolving area. One of the ways that the SEKE team is able to "level the playing field" for companies with limited research and development resources of their own is to keep them updated with the latest solutions available.

Through links with academic and industrial conferences and dissemination events, working links with other centres of excellence around the world and through professional and trade societies and journals, SEKE experts are able to benchmark best practices in all the disciplines relevant to users' needs.

This valuable information also feeds into the knowledge transfer work that SEKE conducts with clients, enabling the team to apply global research and scientific advances to the Region's manufacturing challenges. This capability is a unique benefit of such university/business collaborations.

Reflecting this research-led approach, training activities available at partner campuses are designed to create continuous improvement and to exploit change. They also cover the updating and certification training of staff in such areas as rapid prototyping operations, tooling design, CNC programming and problem solving.

Hands-on Learning Experience for Students

SEKE offers educational visits to each partner site by prior arrangement. These visits, which are very popular with students and teachers, are designed to be relevant to syllabuses being studied at secondary and further education levels. They may for example include short workshops on concept development and creative sketching, computer aided design, rapid prototyping and production processes.

One of the most exciting aspects of such visits is the opportunity for students to see their ideas realised in the form of models created on rapid prototyping machines or in design studios and workshops.

SEKE has developed several case studies relevant to GCSE, A Level and FE syllabuses that can add that extra dimension to teaching and learning and have been shown to be effective in "teasing out" pupil participation.