At Cardiff University's Manufacturing Engineering Centre (Cardiff, Wales, UK), the program 4M Network of Excellence addresses multimaterial micro manufacturing. It's straightforward to batch-fabricate microcomponents and microsystems in silicon. The main objective of 4M is to develop Micro and Nano Technology (MNT) for batchmanufacture of microcomponents and devices in a variety of materials with user-friendly production equipment, processes, and manufacturing platforms for incorporation into the factory of the future. The network of excellence aims to integrate fragmented R&D capacity in non-silicon microtechnologies into a European Centre of Excellence.
The project New Roughness Inspection Probe Mounted on Industrial Robot for Automated Machining is underway at the University of Hartford, Engineering Applications Center, (West Hartford, CT researchers worked with Pratt and Whitney to develop a new miniaturized inspection device. This instrument can be used to monitor the surface quality of titanium blades. A noncontact instrument with probe-type construction, it can be inserted into difficult-to-access areas in a manufacturing cell. It is also designed to be mounted on the end-effector of an industrial robot and will be used in real time.At King's College London, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Centre for Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, Strand, London, UK, robotics is an active area of research. One of the projects is called Automated Programming of Robot. Offline programming of robot manipulators is mostly done using the proven and reliable teach method. Unfortunately, this technique is inflexible, time-consuming, and consumes resources affecting production. The project investigates use of virtual reality tools, artificial intelligence methods, and automated motion planning algorithms for performing the programming task more efficiently.
For more information, go to: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/mecheng/cmms /curprojs.html
At the Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), the project Design and Operation of Manufacturing Systems is applying a number of important methodologies to manufacturing operations to improve performance (e.g. SPC, TQM, JIT, DOE, Management of Constraints, and the like). Each method implies a set of either mutually conflicting or compatible strategies that can be assumed or explicitly stated. This program seeks to understand how these fit together coherently and under what conditions each is applicable, to make the integrated system operate better than one running under several independent strategies and methodologies. This research seeks to understand what strategies work well in the US production system, and to define where these approaches are synergistic and where they are conflicting.
