Good vibrations as Productive Machines raises £2.2 million for machine tool AI

Sheffield-based Productive Machines, an AI start-up has raised £2.2 million in Seed funding to expand the reach of its advanced machine tool process optimisation technology. A spin out of The University of Sheffield, Productive Machines is commercialising its The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) six-year research project to a fully-automated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product. 

Founders Dr Erdem Ozturk and Dr Huseyin Celikag's research covered process and machine tool interactions, including how cutting forces and resulting vibrations affect machine tool performance. The SaaS model predicts and mitigates the influence of these harmful vibrations at every stage in metal and composite milling jobs. It uses a digital twin to determine the best parameters for each machine tool and production run, eliminating wasteful configuration experiments and ensuring that milling jobs are right the first time.

“Manufacturers want to reduce costs, improve quality and cut carbon emissions. But most don’t want to buy complex software products or hire PhD-level engineers to make them work. We are meeting all of their goals. The results of our research and innovation are proven with major manufacturers, and this investment enables us to make the significant benefits more accessible to manufacturers of all sizes, anywhere in the world," says Ozturk.

“Our cutting-edge technology is already best-in-class in a $400 billion industry ripe for optimisation. There are three million machines in the world that would be more accurate, productive and sustainable with our AI, and we are removing the cost and skill barriers to its adoption," he adds. 

The round was led by UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) and includes NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, ACT Venture Partners and Fuel Ventures, alongside grant funding from Innovate UK.

“We are thrilled to cornerstone this investment into a UK-based deep tech University spin out from Sheffield. We are excited by the technology’s ability to reduce energy consumption by up to 25 per cent, in addition to the improvement in surface quality, yield, and waste reduction, all of which offers the potential to bring high value jobs back to the UK in the machining industry," says Alexander Leigh, Investment Director for UKI2S and Future Planet Capital Group. 

“We are particularly pleased that as an Innovate UK investor partner we enabled Productive Machines to successfully apply for £700,000 in non-dilutive grant funding alongside the investment round," he says.