Rivelin Rail speed towards success following awards
How did the business start?
Our business journey began with a pre-accelerator programme with the University of Sheffield Emerge team which finished with a practice pitch.
Three years on, it was exciting to once again be pitching in front of a panel of local founders as well as the Emerge team for their annual Awards Showcase, supported by Santander.
As a winner for the “Gone to Market” category, my pitch felt like a celebration of progress for the Emerge team and wider community as well as Rivelin Rail.
The Awards Showcase audience provided useful hiring tips during the and subsequent networking event. We took this on board and have since grown our team to meet demand for orders and accelerate our future development.
What is Rivelin Rail?
A year ago we launched our Rivelin Rail portable tribometer, a friction inspection device which is now being used to optimise wheel and rail friction management strategies worldwide to reduce damage, prevent delays and improve safety.
The prize, a £5000 grant, funded completion of tasks required for the rail industry product acceptance process which included refining our device calibration. We make highly accurate but user-friendly equipment and wanted our calibration process to reflect this.
Our tribometers are calibrated in our workshop during assembly but we wanted to build a loading frame to simplify and automate this process, saving time as we scale and allowing for calibration elsewhere in the UK and internationally from service centre’s when our friction measurement technology becomes more widely adopted.
What are the next steps for growing the business?
New to the team is James Stoate, a talented Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Sheffield, joining us for a summer internship. He quickly got stuck into a variety of design tasks and his main summer project was designing the calibration rig.
We’ve now ordered components to build this in early September. This includes high quality additive manufactured components from Stratasys (Nottingham). The high- speed sintering (SAF) process behind this type of manufacturing, now used globally, was partially developed through research at the University of Sheffield and a great reminder of the impacts of university-led innovation.
Some of these components are also used in our tribometer. After the Awards Showcase we flew out to Europe to use our friction measurements to optimise a rail lubrication system which increases wheel and rail lifespan and reduces high pitched noise (squeal). Rail temperatures peaked at over 50℃ during the trials, putting our equipment to the test!
Recent Achievements
Designed for early-stage entrepreneurs, AMRC Ferretworks:Start-up is powered by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) and Rivelin Rail have recently won support through AMRC Ferretworks:Start-up programme.
This is delivered in partnership with Royal Academy of Engineering’s Regional Talent Engines (Yorkshire), Sheffield Technology Parks’ Cooper Project and the University of Sheffield’s Commercialisation Journey.
Rivelin Rail will use it to further develop their rail measurement technology and expand their product portfolio.
