Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, opens the Cube at Londoneast-uk – Sensor Coating Systems is first tenant of new facility

Mr Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, opened the new facilities of NATEP project lead Sensor Coating Systems at Londoneast-UK, the new Business and Technical Park in Dagenham. Sensor Coating Systems moved from the incubation facilities at Imperial College London, where it was located for several years. The new spacious facilities will enable the business to capitalise on increasing global demand for its award-winning technology.
Dr Jörg Feist, Managing Director, welcomed the mayor on a laboratory tour and introduced him to the unique temperature mapping technology and the team behind it. The mayor was interested in the ground breaking temperature memory paint and its commercial relevance in the power generation, aerospace and automotive sectors. SCS’ unique, non-destructive, sensing technology can measure temperatures in hard to reach places and harsh conditions where other technologies can’t, such as on automotive pistons and valves or on rotating gas turbine blades, providing entire thermal maps of surfaces usually hidden to the design engineer.
SCS invited a number of its customers and NATEP Programme Director, Jeff Taylor to the unveiling of the new facility and they confirmed to the mayor the significance of the technology to achieve future emission reductions and improved fuel efficiency.
 
5 year Commercial Framework Agreement
The event was underlined by the announcement of a five year commercial Framework Agreement between SCS and its customer MAN Diesel & Turbo, part of the VW group, which will enable the German gas turbine manufacturer to use the award winning sensing technology for their latest engine development programmes.
The laboratory visit was part of the official opening of The Cube, the post-incubation centre at Londoneast-UK.
The new facility includes serviced office and laboratory space including pre-installed fume cupboards and plenty of growth space.
‘We were very pleased to share our excitement about our new home with Sadiq Khan and all the people from Londoneast-uk who assisted us in making this move a great success’ explains Dr Jörg Feist, Managing Director, SCS. ‘This place will enable us to satisfy increasing global customer demand and will support our ambitions to further grow the business.’
Will Iselin, Chairman of SCS, commented: ‘We are proud to be the first tenant at The Cube and flattered that the Mayor of London was on hand to open the facility and kick off the next chapter in Sensor Coatings’ growth story.’
‘We were delighted to introduce our first high tech tenant to Sadiq Khan, mayor of London’, said John Lewis, managing director of Londoneast-uk, and we are looking forward to seeing Sensor Coating Systems flourish and develop their global customer base further using the new facilities.’
Advantages of the Thermal History technology
The thermal history technology will replace current industry standard thermal paints and offers very significant advantages to companies engaged in the development of aero engines and industrial gas turbines. The technology is robust and non-destructive, thereby enabling multiple tests of components used in the development process. A hand held reader is part of the system and the assessment of test results will no longer rely on subjective judgement by development engineers. With greater accuracy in the judgement of test results added to very significant savings in costs and development timescales SCS is confident that its new technology will bring great benefits to all who use it.
How does the technology work?
SCS’ Thermal History technology is based on the light emitting properties of a class of ceramic materials, which, when exposed to particular levels of temperature, undergo irreversible changes in the material structure or chemistry. When excited with a probing light the material starts to phosphoresce and this can be observed with specialised optical components to establish a correlation between the observed light and the past temperature. The ceramic material can be applied as a robust coating onto a component using
standard manufacturing techniques such as atmospheric air plasma spraying (APS) or as a paint giving the end-user great flexibility over the coating application. The readout device can be bench based or hand held, the latter enabling in-situ temperature profiling on a component. Unlike existing solutions on the market, the reading of temperature does not require human subjectivity.
The technology has been also endorsed by a plurality of grant organisations in the UK and the US including INNOVATE UK and the British National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP)