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Investment Announcement
StirLight has secured £1.25 million to commercialise StirSense, its proprietary quality-assurance platform for friction stir welding. The round combines more than £750,000 of pre-seed investment from Haatch Ventures, the British Business Bank, D2N2 and angel investors with about £500,000 of Innovate UK and Aerospace Technology Institute grant funding. Proceeds will support pilot deployments with industrial partners, new engineering and data-science roles, and further development of in-process weld monitoring for aerospace, automotive, defence and energy manufacturers.
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Meet our FSW expert: Jeroen
Dr.-Ing. Jeroen De Backer is StirLight’s co-founder and Technical Director, and one of Europe’s foremost friction stir welding specialists. He spent a decade in TWI’s Friction and Forge Processes group, holds a doctorate in Production Technology from University West in Sweden, and has led national and EU research including Clean Sky 2 OASIS, StirCoat, and Swedish programmes on lightweight FSW. He has authored more than 20 journal papers and continues to teach and supervise students in welding and automation.