Apprentice project drives energy efficiency and savings

14 November, 2024

TROX apprentice Paydon Blow is studying engineering at West Suffolk College, where Paydon’s tutor shared the information with him on the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project. Paydon needed to carry out a project in an active manufacturing environment for his College course, using real-life commercial and financial criteria to determine impact.

After some consideration Paydon explained his idea where this technology may prove useful to his industry mentor Roger Trueman, Maintenance Manager at TROX, and after reviewing our operations they decided that we had an ideal application for it. TROX purchased the Power Monitoring Mentored Self-Start programme from the Digital Shoestring team and the materials to build the hardware, then Paydon got to work on the assembly and deployment. The Shoestring package included detailed instructions, a community forum, and a series of video conferencing meetings with the Shoestring team for progress and technical support.

Paydon wanted to explore energy-saving opportunities using the Raspberry Pi to measure, record, and display energy consumption for this project. A Raspberry Pi is a very low-cost computer, which runs Linux. It provides a set of general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, which enables interaction with electrical components. The Raspberry Pi series of computers is made by a UK-based charity that aims to help people develop IT skills, and to facilitate access to computing for everyone.

The aim of Paydon’s project was to improve visibility of energy usage across the compressed air system at TROX UK. The company recently replaced four old air compressors with a single new one incorporating more advanced technology, which had already presented TROX with significant cost reduction. The savings identified during this project were in addition to this. Shoestring provided the Bill of materials, software, and technical support for Paydon and the engineering team to complete the project.

With this technology in place, TROX’s engineering team has been able to gain a better understanding of demand for compressed air around the factory, including times of day for most and least demand. This allows certain pieces of machinery to be switched off strategically when not in use, to reduce overall energy consumption and to contribute to the site’s sustainability initiatives.

The Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring initiative was conceived in 2016 by Duncan McFarlane, Professor of Industrial Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge Engineering, and has rapidly demonstrated its potential for industrial impact with the help of industry partners. Together with the Shoestring team, an impact review was carried out to gain an understanding of the cost, benefits and estimated payback period for the project, as well as reflect on how it changed TROX’s perceptions of digitisation and digital manufacturing technology.