University of Wales, Bangor steps in to assist Conwy Valley Systems

The Company

Conwy Valley Systems Limited (CVS), founded in 1997 has developed the world’s first integrated digital petrography system, PETROG, combining innovative software with state-of-the-art hardware. Based in Llandudno, the company’s main clients are BP, other multinational oil companies and integrated national oil companies, mainly in the Middle East and the Americas. PETROG integrates the petrographer’s visual identification skill with the power of computers to perform imaging processing. Barrie Wells, Managing Director of CVS, says: ‘Petrography was once the most important tool available to the exploration geologist, but it has fallen out of favour because it is still rooted in the descriptive tradition. PETROG brings the science of petrography into the digital age and is hence helping to re-establish it as a useful, indeed essential, step in the exploration and development process.’

The University

CVS had an urgent requirement to replace the electro-mechanical device controlling the positioning of the slide on the microscope, called a Stepper Stage, when the manufacturers of the only existing device suitable for rotating stages suddenly ceased production. HELP Wales linked CVS with Industrial Development Bangor (IDB), the technology development arm of Bangor University, who used their expertise in miniature electronic devices to make possible a step-change in the service provided to the petrographer.The re-designed device not only improves accuracy and degree of control, and adds reproducibility to movements, it has been described as bearing the same relation to the previous device that a word processor does to an electronic typewriter. The new Stepper Stage comprises two precision miniature linear actuators fixed together to form an X-Y position controller. Precision and repeatability is assured without employing feedback sensors. Position is under software control from a PC mouse and can be programmatically determined as either absolute or relative position.

The Results

The joint project was crucial to the survival of the PETROG product, and the innovation brought by IDB allowed a dramatic improvement to the product which has resulted in significant breakthroughs in the marketplace. Barrie Wells said that 'CVS had been unable to find a way forward. Commercial electronic companies has turned down the opportunity to help develop a new stepper stage as being too technologically risky and it was only the intervention of HELP Wales ad the opportunity to work with IDB that had rescued the entire PETROG product'. Barrie’s ultimate aim, along with his small but highly experienced team at CVS, is to further extend its reach into global markets from its base in North West Wales.

< Back to Case Studies