Enable secures another £50,000 funding from Innovate UK
Anja Stolte, Head of Marketing at Enable Manufacturing, is a winner of the Women in Innovation Award 20/21 by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. With this award, the team at Enable has secured a grant of £50,000 for its project: Casting 4.0 – Supply chain digitalization to produce metal parts using Additive Casting®.
First launched in 2016, the Women in Innovation Award is a competition by Innovate UK that is aimed at finding women with exciting, innovative ideas and ambitious plans that will inspire others. Within this competition, Innovate UK was especially looking for women who could use the grant to make siginificant contributions to pressing societal, environmental and economic challenges through their project.
Enable’s Additive Casting technology combines 3D printing with traditional metal casting processes and allows for the production of complex metal parts, at competitive cost in nearly any metal.
Anja will be focusing her Women in Innovation Award on creating a data management and tracking system to further reduce lead-time for products made with Additive Casting.
It will provide a platform to monitor an order right through to invoice, automatically generating and sharing manufacturing data. By tracking and recording the manufacturing stages through the supply chain, it gives complete visibility and traceability for the end customer. The project will support the commercialisation of the Additive Casting technology and fulfil the company’s ambition of being able to supply castings within four weeks, as opposed to the six to 12 months as is common with traditional casting, providing a unique service to customers.
‘Our goal is to offer high quality, complex and affordable metal parts for industrial applications including automotive, marine, aerospace and engineering. Manufacturing metal parts in a traditional way requires high expenditure for tooling, long lead-times and high inventory holdings of finished or work-in-progress parts. This leaves manufacturing businesses in-flexible to changing customer demand and cash-poor as money is tied up in inventory holdings.’
Anja Stolte, Head or Marketing at Enable Manufacturing
By using Additive Casting for the production of metal parts, UK businesses can digitalize supply chains, innovate quicker, save money and re-shore productions to the UK. This became particularly relevant last year when the COVID-19 pandemic meant businesses found themselves unable to obtain parts from China as the world ground to a halt.
This is the second Innovate UK grant, the team at Enable managed to secure since November 2020, allowing the company to swiftly advance its innovation roadmap.
Related news: Enable has been granted funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency
About Enable Manufacturing
Enable is bringing a new, innovative manufacturing process to life – Additive Casting. The process uses moulds made via additive manufacturing to cast high-quality production parts from over 130 different metals. It bridges the gap between traditional casting and state-of-the-art manufacturing, offering the volume benefits of casting while increasing possible complexity, cutting lead times and eliminating the need for expensive tooling.
For more information, visit https://enable.parts/
