Mark Cunliffe

Managing Director

Mark is the founder of Involution and an experienced Engineering Managing Director. Mark’s background is in drivetrains – gained through operational and management roles within the aerospace and renewables industries.  Mark is connected to an extensive global network of wind and tidal turbine manufacturers, driveline/gearbox Tier 1’s and service suppliers.

Mark graduated from The University of Manchester with a Masters degree in Engineering After a decade in the aerospace industry Mark then started working in the renewables sector with Orbital2. As General Manager where he helped to build Orbital2 into a team of 24 engineers based over 3 offices in the Czech Republic and in the UK. Mark was extensively involved in developing Orbital2’s portfolio of 8 European and Asian technology licensees, manufacturing 20 gearbox designs ranging from 0.5MW to 7MW, in 5 factories

Dr Frank Cunliffe

Chairman & CTO

Dr Frank Cunliffe has over 45 years experience in Epicyclic gear design, with a PhD in “Epicyclic Gear Dynamics“ from Cambridge and 40 plus years working relationship with Ray Hicks MBE.

Frank has a long history in industry with multiple Director roles at Massey Ferguson, Cable Belt, Albion Automotive (VC backed MBO/ trade sale). Dr Frank founded ORBITAL2 15+ years ago with Ray Hicks reintroducing the novel flexible pin gear transmission to wind and tidal turbines. This aim was successfully achieved with many multi MW wind turbines now operating around the world with flexible pin gearboxes Dr Frank lead Orbital2 in developing 8 European / Asian technology licensees, manufacturing over 30 gearbox designs ranging from 0.5MW to 7MW, in 5 factories.

Dr Frank now joins Involution bringing his long engineering experience and pedigree to the Involution team. Dr Frank is well known to many of the world’s wind/tidal OEM’s and design houses as well as the electric vehicle market.

John Sword

Director

Mr. John Sword (Non-Executive Director), read Engineering at Cambridge, has an MBA from Harvard and has enjoyed a long career running international engineering businesses including being CFO of Massey Ferguson.

John is Involution’s business advisor and Board Director.

Pavel Bastar

Design Manager

Pavel has been involved with gear and gearbox design since 2002, with much of that time spent designing flexible pin gearboxes for the global wind industry at Orbital2. During his career, Pavel has been involved with the MCT and TGL tidal turbines as well as leading many wind turbine projects at 3MW, 3.6MW, 5MW and 7MW. He has worked extensively across Europe and Asia, specifically in Korea and China for customers such as SEWIND (Shanghai Electric), DOOSAN Korea, XJ China and Dongfang. Pavel has extensive experience of building, testing, certifying and commissioning gearboxes around the world including visits to the largest offshore wind farm in China and test turbines in Korea. Pavel now brings this extensive experience to Involution in his senior role as Involution’s Design Manager.

Ondrej Martinec

Product Manager

Ondrej’s career in gearbox design started in 1999, initially with the design of industrial transmissions and from 2005 designing flexible pin gearboxes at ORBITAL2.

Since then he has gone on to become a highly experienced gearbox designer, working on advanced flexible pin gearboxes, including many 1.5, 2, and 2.5MW projects, with several of these projects being variable-ratio wind turbine gearboxes. He has worked extensively on designing and supporting the manufacture of industrial, wind and tidal gearboxes in factories in Europe and China, for customers such as HYUNDAI, XJ China, Inox India. He has significant experience of tidal machine design, working on both the Tidal Generation Ltd (TGL Alstom) and Marine Current Turbines (MCT-Siemens) turbines and design proposals for other tidal turbine OEM’s.

With Ondrej and Pavel leading the design team, Involution has the experience to efficiently deliver state-of-the-art, reliable, certified gearbox designs within challenging timeframes.