Today is a short update.

I had an opportunity to emerge from the trenches today and head along to a business event taking place in the next town over from me.

The event was mainly focused on the manufacturing side of engineering, with exhibitors covering industrial CNC machines, industrial 3D printing, injection moulding, plastics, bearings, asset management software and various other areas of industrial manufacturing.

There were also a couple of interesting talks from representatives of Rolls-Royce — the engineering company behind aircraft engines, nuclear power systems and all kinds of heavy engineering equipment, rather than the cars — and Bespak, which manufactures inhalation devices and other medical products.

Both gave an interesting insight into what they manufacture, the processes involved, and particularly the extremely narrow tolerances they have to work within while still maintaining reliability across very large production volumes.

It was certainly an interesting morning, and I managed to talk to a few people working in industries adjacent to my own.

Electronics, embedded systems and small-scale prototyping didn’t feature particularly heavily at the event, but there is nearly always some crossover between engineering disciplines, and quite often that is where the more interesting conversations happen.

It was also a useful reminder that occasionally emerging from behind the workbench and seeing how other parts of the engineering world operate is time well spent.