Industrial products

Analytical & diagnostic instruments
Sagentia has significant experience developing products for adjacent or emerging markets within the instrumentation space. By taking a science and technology led approach, Sagentia helps clients rapidly deliver compelling solutions to the marketplace. Whether the challenge is taking precision laboratory instrument functionality into the field, deskilling existing products or developing sophisticated optical detector solutions, Sagentia will deliver innovation that enables commercially successful products.

Metering
For more than 25 years Sagentia has been bringing innovation to the world of fluid metering in industrial and domestic applications. The current initiatives for smart domestic meters require extremely low-cost, low-power and accurate sensors, as well as efficient communication technologies; these meters must also be designed to survive in harsh environments. Sagentia has a proven track record in the development and delivery of multiple metering products.

Energy
In the oil and gas market, Sagentia supports clients to maximise yield from existing fields, to improve drilling technologies and to help deploy products into harsher environments where reliability, remote monitoring and control are vital. We also help clients realise the current drive for renewable sources of energy, energy efficiency and to meet increasingly stringent environmental regulations. Sagentia is also a founding member of Cambridge Cleantech.

Case studies:

• Markem, a leading industrial printing and coding company, needed to develop a low-cost thermal transfer coder specifically for developing markets. Working in collaboration with Markem, we undertook the design, development and introduction to manufacture, including the selection of Chinese manufacturers. To meet market requirements for a low-cost solution, we actively controlled costs by undertaking a careful trade-off analysis of features and benefits versus cost. We took the product from specification through to product launch in just 18 months.
• The next generation of domestic appliances will be reliant on sophisticated sensing technologies to provide smart control. Sagentia has developed many technologies for our clients, including imaging systems to monitor cabinet contents, acoustics and optics to change cycles dependent upon washer contents and acoustic signatures to monitor and control HVAC. Today there is a particular drive in machine vision where there has been a step change in possibilities, as evidenced by the functions now commonplace in consumer cameras and phones.
• Grohe, a major European bathroom fittings company, decided to enter the electronic shower market. It needed a technology partner that was fully conversant with the component technologies, could relate these to VoC research and could develop the right product, first time. Sagentia’s track record in shower technology, electronics engineering, software and water meters enabled the company to offer a seamless service from front end to transfer to manufacture.
• Underground Imaging Technologies (UIT) uses a combination of sensors (including radar, electromagnetic and seismic) to map underground assets and utilities. The sensors generate very large volumes of data in which the useful signals can be literally buried in a mass of ‘clutter’. Sagentia developed a data fusion model and a software system to enable operators to efficiently and accurately process these data sets. UIT is now a part of the Caterpillar group and is the market leader in its field.
• Our client needed an alternative to fully wired seismic monitoring systems for use in oil and gas exploration. We designed and developed the seismic acquisition system based on cellular radio technology. The design included all aspects of the electronics, software and robust, waterproof enclosure.