10167167Automated Geotechnical Marine Drill for the Offshore Renewables MarketClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKMintMech Ltd is an innovative marine design and manufacturing company based in Cornwall, employing a team of 16 highly skilled engineers. MintMech operates in the offshore wind geotechnical drilling sector, supplying a range of automation systems to improve safety, increase productivity and reduce down time. MintMech delivers a turn-key design-manufacture-commission service with the recent addition of in-house manufacturing capabilities meaning that there is complete control of this process. This project will see the company design an Automated Geotechnical Marine Drill that can be used for the Offshore Renewables market. Specifically for use in geotechnical site investigations which come as a precursor to wind turbine foundation design. Automation of key functions such as active heave compensation, performance measurement, real-time data processing and enhanced safety for operators will drive the innovation. MintMech is currently actively engaged in this sector providing safety lead enhancements to geotechnical drilling operations and has highlighted a market requirement for such a solution. Existing market solutions are limited in capability, safety features and productivity. This project will build on the companies expertise in the automation of offshore systems by developing entirely automated drilling solution, which will not only be a completely new product in this market, but present safer option to the current generation of systems in this field. Increased efficiency and reduced downtime resulting from these innovations will result in reduced CO2 omissions and reduced costs for this phase of offshore wind farm project lifecycle. The work packages that this project will support will allow MintMech to develop the fundamental structure and mechanical arrangement of the system as well as the automated heave compensation drilling platform components on which this system depends. These components can then be furnished with MintMech's existing automation IP to complete the automated drill package. This will deliver a ready-for-market design that the company will be able to market, sell and build in its new manufacturing facilities in Cornwall. Supply of this system will see MintMech's team grow with additional mechanical design engineers and automation engineers.