Surrey Sensors Ltd. was formed back in 2015, as a spin up out of the university that was using their IP and know-how to make it possible to use mass market components to create extremely sensitive and unique measurement tools.

“One of the specialized instruments that we build is used for measuring the air speed and the direction from which the air is coming,” Birch said. “These multi-hole pressure probes have been around since the 1920s, though they have advanced over the years. We’ve found a way of packing all of the plumbing and electronics into really small spaces. We’re also building them out of sensors that are not particularly expensive so we can offer them at competitive prices.”

Using Solid Edge to Develop New Sensor Technology

Birch explained that Surrey Sensors’ use of Solid Edge spawned directly from the University environment. “We teach using Solid Edge here at the university, but it had  a valuable addition to our company as well.”

Much of the work that Surrey Sensors does involves making things as small as they can possibly be. “Thanks to the latest advancements in additive manufacturing and 3D printing, the geometry of small, complicated parts is no longer constrained by the limitations of conventional CNC machines. With a 3D printer, if you can model the part, you can make it,” Birch said.

“We have some extremely complicated geometries; things like manifolds that fit in a very small part and have to take multiple pressure lines from one point to another in a very, very tight space. We now design these parts in Solid Edge with very complicated cutlets. For the sort of work that we're doing, it's not sophisticated assemblies; it's not complicated machinery. Part of the value of Solid Edge is that it is intuitive. When training people to use it, it takes very little time. We hire an engineer and within a couple of days, they're able to jump in very quickly.”

Birch sees a major advantage in that they don’t have to spend months getting a new engineer up to speed on the software. “It seems that regardless of what platform they've been trained on, our design engineers seem to pick up Solid Edge relatively easily. The transferability from other platforms is pretty straightforward.”

One of the aims for Surrey Sensors has been to keep the final integration as simple as possible, in order to minimize both the cost and the difficulty of manufacturing. “From the very beginning, we designed things to have drop-in, slot-in or snap-in electronic elements that are completely isolated,” Birch said.

Their main focus for the software was 3D modeling for mechanical assemblies and to check for interferences and work out mass characteristics and center of mass. “Using the software to check these details before we build something, we know where the center of mass is going to be. On things like custom instrumentation for small UAVs, that is critical. You don't want to sell the customer a product with the centers of mass in the wrong place.”

Pull vs Push Design Process – and Purple Potato Peelers

Every business has a design process to get from sketches to a product that is ready to hit the market. Obviously, these processes vary greatly depending on the organization, their industry and of course, the product that they are developing.

Birch explains that Surrey Sensors’ advantage is that they are really in more of a technology pull, rather than a technology push.

“The usual mentality is, ‘Here’s my idea. I think it’s fantastic, and there might be some way that somebody could use it. So, let’s turn it into a product, patent it and go knocking on people’s doors.’ We tried that with an early health-related product. We went over to a major company that makes similar products. I said, ‘Here, we invented a technology that works much, much better than yours, and it's better, faster, cheaper and everything else.’ They looked at it and said, ‘Yeah, you're probably right. But we're turning over 20 million a year with what we’ve got already. We don't see any need to improve it,’” explained Birch.

With the technology they’ve created, there were already people out there asking for it. In fact, the company had a backlog of orders within weeks of putting it out on the market.

Birch uses “purple potato peelers” as an example of their engineering process. “If a customer comes to us and asks, ‘Do you sell these?’ the answer is, ‘Well, no. Nobody’s ever asked for those.’ Then more people come asking for purple potato peelers, and we start asking ourselves, ‘Should we be making purple potato peelers?’”

When they are ready to explore a new concept or idea, the team sits down and does a simulation. “We do the math, we do the analytics and try to see if it will work,” Birch said. “If we can convince ourselves that it is not theoretically impossible, then it goes off to the systems people to build something that looks like a wire basket full of spare parts—just to see whether or not it can be done.”

At that point, it is go or no-go for the project with the current technology. Then it's seeing if the thing works the way that they predict it would. “So, we take this wire basket full of parts, make it do whatever it is that it's meant to be doing and see how it responds. It won't be perfect, but it'll give us an idea of what the capabilities are,” Birch said.

Then their mechanical systems team puts together a conceptual sketch of the product and it goes off to marketing to research the need in the marketplace. Solid Edge Model Based Definition has the ability to create a digital definition of parts and assemblies using a 3D model, which in the right environment could be helpful with conceptual sketches like these.

“We’ll often go to some of our regular, trusted customers and get a feel for the need. Often, asking questions like, ‘If you had something that could do this, would you do with it? Or what value would this add to your organization? Is this the sort of purple potato peeler that you wanted?’ And then based on that, we make a decision on moving forward with the product,” Birch said.

When their design is ready for production, Birch and his team have a partnership with a major OEM to make sensors to their specifications using their platforms, as well as having contractors for the other manufactured components—many of which are precision electronics that you simply can’t do by hand. All of the components come to Birch and his team for final inspection.

Embracing Creativity in Research

Beyond the complexities of software, prototyping and manufacturing, Birch and his team work to embrace the creativity that their engineers bring to the table.

“All of our staff have standing instructions to think about things that could be done... what would be cool? Occasionally, one of these will turn into something that we didn’t realize was possible. At that point, it goes from an idea to a project, and then to the director of research who has to be convinced it will work.”

Birch continued, “Part of our business model is to fund creativity. We put a lot of money back into R&D. As the director of research, not everything that I sign off on will necessarily lead to a product. For example, I gave our development team the time to go and sit and think about how you could measure absolute velocity and let them keep thinking about it even after they told me a 70-foot radio telescope was needed. That's a big part of it. First off, who knows what's going to come out of it. They may stop halfway through and say, ‘Well, we’re getting too much uncertainty in this calculation. We need a better algorithm for solving this.’ And then, out of the project, we get a more efficient algorithm, which we can use in our firmware elsewhere.”

This method of research and development certainly seems to have worked well for Surrey Sensors so far. “That sort of thing happens all the time. The important thing isn't what you're working on, but just that you're working. You get much more creativity out of an R&D team if you just let them play. By comparison, a lot of marketplace R&D teams are just told, ‘Here's a bolt, it's 12 percent too heavy. Find a way to make it lighter.’” Birch said.

Surrey Sensors has learned to leverage the philosophical (and creative) spirit of their academic roots in order to create a growing array of products that are being used in a number of aerospace and research environments.

“There are very few people in the world that make and market these kinds of products. Ours are built out of mass market sensors so we have a competitive edge” Birch said. “As we move forward, we're finding that products we're introducing are getting smaller and more sophisticated. I suppose that is a natural progression for a technology company. Things always get smaller and better and faster and cheaper as the components or the assemblies get smaller and more complicated. We’re probably going to start needing to use some of the more sophisticated functionality of Solid Edge to make it happen.”

By finding ways to streamline their design process and utilize approachable platforms like Solid Edge, they’ve built products that walk the line between low-budget sensors and extremely high- end technologies.

For more information about the Solid Edge for Startups program and how to get a free trial of Solid Edge, visit solidedge.siemens.com.