The Royal Society Senior Research Fellow Professor Xiangqian (Jane) Jiang, chief scientist at the Centre of Precision Technologies heads the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Advanced Metrology that was inaugurated on April 8 at an event introducing nine new Centers for Innovative Manufacturing (CIM).
The CIM will together share a total grant of £45 million and collaborate with businesses to enhance manufacturing research.
The Centre will design and develop a ‘factory on the machine', a platform to match implementation of production and measurement technologies on machines. It will connect measurement and production to offer cost- effective complexity and quality in production.
The grant of £4m, with an additional amount of £3.2m from industry partners such as Renishaw, Rolls Royce, Taylor Hobson, David Brown Gear Systems, Cummins Turbo Technologies, Carl Zeiss, Asquith Butler, Neuteq Europe, The Manufacturing Technologies Association, the Science & Technology Facilities Council, the National Physical Laboratory, Machine Tool Technologies and The Centre for Integrated Photonics.
The Centre will develop disruptive manufacturing solutions for future editions of high value-added products. The "factory on the machine" prototype will help a sustainable manufacturing segment for engineered devices based on nano scale geometrical accuracy and surfaces whose functions are optimized. The delivered platform will incorporate production capability with metrology to deliver a quality control feedback loop both for product quality and for sustained machining process.
The Centre will also develop measurement and specification systems and products including smart software and hardware systems and establish an underpinning technology in measurement science to be applicable for nano scale surfaces. The cost- effective technologies will offer increased manufacturing capability in the UK that will be deployed in areas such as aerospace, machining-tools, instrumentation and automotive engineering.
Source: http://www.epsrc.ac.uk