Founded in response to the drive towards digital across engineering industry, the Digital Manufacturing Lab hosts multi-disciplinary teams sitting at the cutting-edge of future design and manufacturing technologies, tools, and systems. Crossing the boundaries between design technologies, digital and rapid manufacture, digital twins, data science, robotics, and metrology systems, the DML aims to produce disruptive knowledge and tools for industry and the general public alike.
Hosting teams of researchers from across the Faculty of Engineering, the DML holds world-leading expertise and cutting-edge technologies in:
- Engineering design and manufacture across the lifecycle
- 4D Printing, carbon fibre printing, and experimental additive manufacture technologies
- Combined additive, subtractive, and metrology platforms
- Digital twinning tools and technologies
- Smart cities, and city and building-scale condition monitoring and digital twinning
- Creating integrated digital-physical workflows, inc. virtual and augmented reality
- Human-robot co-working and Nuclear and Space robotics
Major Projects and Technologies
ProtoTwinning: Seamless Digital-Physical Prototyping
The product development process requires an orchestration of physical and digital models of different qualities, fidelities, and capabilities.
A huge amount of work goes into managing these models, transferring between the physical and digital worlds, updating designs, and trying to align the information that each model and prototype provides.
But imagine instead that all models were intelligently linked across the digital and physical worlds. Where design changes in any model automatically update the others. Where test results are automatically shared and integrated wherever they are most useful. Where the physical world and digital world in engineering grow together and take the best of both, with no need for systems or work to bridge the gap between.
As part of a 4-year project we are developing the next generation of digital / physical models and systems, creating a fully integrated tool chain that allows engineers to work in the media that they want, when they want, and leverages the speed of computation and physicality of the real world to vastly increase understanding and capability while simultaneously reducing design cycle time and cost.
Multi-Function Additive Manufacture
Fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing of thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs) is being employed to manufacture tailorable, flexible cellular structures which can be designed and optimised for specific energy absorbing applications. Density-graded structures have been designed, manufactured and tested to show their efficacy in absorbing a wide range of impact energies.
Curved layer FFF toolpaths are being used to improve the surface finish of printed components with double curvature and, importantly, to reduce the number of layer interfaces within a part, thereby reducing the risk of delamination.
FFF printing of active/passive TPU trilayer is being used to create strong 4D printed structures with predictable actuation behaviour. The active material swells in water up to 100% strain, thereby enabling hinge actuation angles of up to 150 degrees in thin (1.2mm) structures.
Stereolithographic 3D printing of short-fibre composites is being research, using acoustic radiation forces to control both the alignment and position of the reinforcing fibres within the structure. Glass microfibres are placed within a light sensitive liquid resin, ultrasonically manipulated in to a predetermined microstructure, and the resin is subsequently selectively cured using a laser.
Micron-scale additive manufacture of electronics via Optomec Aerosol Jet 5X
The Digital Manufacturing Lab is proud to host the UKs only Optomec Aerosol Jet 5X printer.
The aerosol Jet process uses aerodynamic focusing to precisely and accurately deposit electronic inks onto substrate. The ink is placed into an atomizer, which creates a dense mist of material-laden droplets between 1 and 5 microns in diameter. The aerosol mist is then delivered to the deposition head where it is focused by a sheath gas, which surrounds the aerosol as an annular ring. When the sheath gas and aerosol pass through the profiled nozzle, they accelerate and the aerosol becomes ‘focused’ into a tight stream of droplets. The sheath gases are typically clean, dry Nitrogen or compressed air, and also serve to insulate the nozzle from material contact preventing clogging. The resulting high velocity particle stream remains focused during its travel from the nozzle to the substrate over a distance of 2 to 5 mm maintaining feature resolution on non-uniform and 3D substrates with printed features ranging from 10 microns to millimetres. The system is driven by standard CAD data which is converted to make a vector-based tool path. This tool path allows patterning of the ink by driving a 2D or 3D motion control system.
