LEAD Factory

In LEAD (Low Energy Autonomous Digital) Factory we have put together a consortium containing the world's leading companies in their relevant disciplines, combining their innovation strengths to allow us to create a new method of manufacturing.

This unique process will create functional plastics from plant waste, converting them into usable, functional polymers. The manufacturing process using these polymers will then not only be low energy during manufacture but be clean with no harmful emissions in gas or liquid effluent. It will be entirely controlled digitally from the creation of the object and also right through its operation. To ensure circularity in the process we have developed an innovative recovery process to gain useful elements back from the plastic at end of life.

Creating parts digitally has numerous energy, productivity, and waste reduction benefits; the parts can be optimised to a greater extent as tooling is always a compromise created from the need to launch rapidly while avoiding expensive tooling modifications, there is no carbon in the tool and product can be supplied immediately in the quantity required, made near the point of need. This offers the potential of being a disruptive game-changing alternative to injection moulding.

This project will design, assemble and validate a novel production line powered by 3D printers and validate its capabilities by manufacturing six very different products: glasses, figurines, electronic components, auto parts, lamp shades and dental aligners. These will be validated by leading companies in their fields. We will calculate CO2 savings for them and then be able to extrapolate these savings if widely applied to supply plastic within the UK.

This project can act as a trigger for starting the next digital industrial revolution of manufacturing, again here in the UK.