Metrology for precision and additive manufacturing

自人类诞生以来，我们的社会就建立在商业的基础上，也就是说，我们制造东西，然后把它们卖给别人。相对简单的开端导致了工业革命，现在是技术时代。过分概括地说，远东目前是大规模制造业的大师，而西方是（或希望成为）先进制造业的大师-生产高价值商品，通常涉及相当程度的创新。为了能够以具有成本效益、环境可持续的方式制造产品，需要质量控制程序。质量控制反过来又需要适当的测量基础设施。英国政府一直在大力投资于先进制造业。在学术竞技场，有16个EPSRC创新制造中心。为了减轻将学术研究转移到制造业的痛苦，有七个高价值制造弹射器（制造技术中心是这里最主要的一个）。对于工业，有一些筹资倡议和税收减免。为了支持这个蓬勃发展的英国先进制造业基础设施，有少量的学术中心计量-那些设在哈德斯菲尔德和巴斯是主要的球员。在测量树的顶端，有世界级的国家物理实验室-一个卓越的计量中心。但是，在制造计量研究拼图中仍然存在一些空白，这项研究的目的是填补这些空白。坐标测量作为过程控制的最主要形式已经在制造业中使用了几十年，通常采用触觉坐标测量机（CMM）。然而，由于触觉系统的速度较慢，而且它们只能获取有限数量的点，光学坐标测量机开始蓬勃发展。在较小的规模上，有许多光学表面测量设备倾向于在工业中离线使用。在制造小型、高精度、复杂的部件时，需要将表面测量系统和坐标测量机结合起来。这一要求是奖学金的主要目标之一-开发一套快速，高精度，非接触式测量系统，可用于工业。这些原则也将应用于增材制造领域-这是一种新的制造模式，得到了政府的大力支持，在某些情况下，还得到了媒体的大肆宣传。与高精度组件一样，增材制造需要坐标计量基础设施，在许多情况下，在线允许直接反馈到制造过程。这是该研究金将涉及的第二个计量学领域，研究金的产出将是学术出版物;新的测量仪器，沿着使用现有仪器的新方法;允许制造商验证其仪器性能的方法;以及必要的规范前工作，这将导致这两个领域的规格标准（目前缺乏）。学术界将受益于研究元素的基本性质，工业制造界将受益于开发的技术和标准化路线。但最终，英国公民将在新产品和增强型产品以及精密和增材制造的财富创造潜力方面获得最大利益。

Since the beginning of humanity our societies have been based on commerce, i.e. we make things and we sell them to other people. Relatively simple beginnings led to the Industrial Revolution and now to the technological age. Over-generalising, the Far East are currently the masters of mass manufacture and the West are (or wish to be) the masters of advanced manufacture - the production of high-value goods, often involving a significant degree of innovation. To be able to manufacture goods in a cost-effective, environmentally-sustainable manner, quality control procedures are required. And quality control in turn requires an appropriate measurement infrastructure to be in place. It is a sub-set of this measurement infrastructure that is the subject of this fellowship.The UK government has been investing heavily in advanced manufacturing. In the academic arena, there are the sixteen EPSRC Centres of Innovative Manufacturing. To ease the pain of transferring academic research to the manufacturing sector, there are the seven High-Value Manufacturing Catapults (the Manufacturing Technology Centre being the main one of note here). For industry, there are a number of funding initiatives and tax breaks. To support this burgeoning UK advanced manufacturing infrastructure, there are a small number of academic centres for metrology - those based at Huddersfield and Bath are the main players. And, at the top of the measurement tree, there is the world-class National Physical Laboratory - a centre of excellence in metrology. But, there are still some gaps in the manufacturing metrology research jigsaw, and the aim of this fellowship is to plug those gaps. Coordinate metrology has been used for decades in the manufacturing industry as the most dominant form of process control, usually employing tactile coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). However, due to the slow speed of tactile systems and the fact that they can only take a limited amount of points, optical CMMs are starting to flourish. On the smaller scale, there are many optical surface measuring devices that tend to be used off-line in industry. When making small, high-precision, complex components, with difficult to access geometries, it is a combination of the surface measurement systems and the CMMs that is required. This requirement is one of the main aims of the fellowship - to develop a suite of fast, high-accuracy, non-contact measurement systems, which can be employed in industry. These principles will also be applied to the field of additive manufacturing - a new paradigm in manufacturing which is seeing significant government support and, in some cases, media hype. As with high-precision components, a coordinate metrology infrastructure for additive manufacturing is required, in many cases in-line to allow direct feedback to the manufacturing process. This is the second field of metrology that the fellowship will address.The outputs of the fellowship will be in the form of academic publications; new measurement instruments, along with new ways to use existing instruments; methods to allow manufacturers to verify the performance of their instruments; and the necessary pre-normative work that will lead to specification standards in the two fields (currently lacking). The academic world will benefit from the fundamental nature of elements of the research, and the industrial manufacturing world will benefit from the techniques developed and routes to standardisation. But, ultimately, it will be the UK citizens that will reap the greatest benefit in terms of new and enhanced products, and the wealth creation potential from precision and additive manufacturing.