Future Additive Manufacturing Platform Grant

诺丁汉大学（UoN）的增材制造和3D打印研究小组（3DPRG）专注于发现和理解用于高价值制造和进一步先进研究应用的先进增材制造（AM）解决方案。3DPRG的基础可以追溯到20世纪90年代初，理查德·黑格、伊恩·阿什克罗夫特、菲尔·狄更斯、克里斯·塔克和里奇·怀尔德曼从21世纪初开始合作。这一成功的关系在2011年通过AM的EPSRC创新制造中心的授予而正式化，并在2012年我们搬到UoN时得以实现。我们的学术团体通过促进露丝·古德里奇（2012年）和马丁·鲍默斯（2016年）的学术地位得到进一步加强。我们是一个明确建立的规模研究小组，被国际公认为在AM领域开展领先工作。我们在获得赠款资金，联合出版物和实现影响（学术，工业和社会）方面有着良好的记录。凭借在单一和多材料/多功能AM方面的专业知识和记录，我们的研究方法既以用户为中心，又以科学为导向。除了与补充和扩展我们能力的物理和应用科学的强大而持久的跨学科联系外，我们还建立了一个由约100人的学者和研究人员组成的核心多学科团队，位于一个专门建造的实验室中。我们的目标是研究成功执行和实施AM作为一种可行的制造工具所必需的基础工艺，材料和计算方法。我们对支持AM的兴趣和关注使我们与不同的工业部门和主要（国际）制造公司合作，在众多应用中实现独特的AM解决方案。随着AM研究的强大历史，英国现在需要利用其深厚的基础知识基础，成功地在工业中实施AM。然而，正如英国增材制造战略的中期报告所强调的那样，现在工业上部署的技术范围主要基于20多年前的技术发展（最初是为了原型设计而引入的），并且在生产零件的速度、可重复性、准确性、材料范围和功能性方面仍然存在显著的生产力障碍。因此，今天的增材制造技术在很大程度上还没有准备好在大多数生产环境中实施，也不足以满足潜在用户的需求，特别是在生产力问题（生产速度或材料效用）方面。我们推动这一平台提案的愿景是发现、理解和实现AM解决方案的工业实施，以解决生产力和工业可扩展性问题，我们的目标是，这将加强我们在从发现到部署的整个价值链中的参与。这一愿景将需要与所有利益相关者建立密切关系，包括不同学科的学者;更广泛的创新生态系统（特别是弹射器）; AM设备和材料制造商;参与政策制定的组织;以及多个行业的最终用户。因此，该平台提案的中心是解决一个具有公认的（国际）重要性的主题，同时维持一个国际知名的研究小组。它将使我们能够通过探索和利用新兴科学来更新我们的长期研究愿景，同时保持专注于克服与将AM应用于工业相关的挑战。

The Additive Manufacturing & 3D Printing Research Group (3DPRG) at The University of Nottingham (UoN) is focused on the discovery and understanding of advanced Additive Manufacturing (AM) solutions for high value manufacturing and further advanced research applications. The foundations of the 3DPRG go back to the early 1990s and Richard Hague, Ian Ashcroft, Phill Dickens, Chris Tuck and Ricky Wildman have worked collaborated since the mid-2000s. This successful relationship was formalised in 2011 by the award of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in AM and crystallised with our move to UoN in 2012. Our academic grouping was further strengthened through the promotion to academic positions of Ruth Goodridge (2012) and Martin Baumers (2016). Together, we are a clearly established research group of scale that is internationally recognised as undertaking leading work in the field of AM. We have a strong track record in obtaining grant funding, of joint publications and of achieving impact (academic, industrial and societal).With expertise and track record in both single and multi-material / multifunctional AM, our research approach is both user-centred and scientifically driven. Alongside strong and enduring interdisciplinary links to the physical and applied sciences that complement and extend our capabilities, we have built a core multi-disciplinary team of academics and researchers of ~100 people, housed in a purpose built laboratory. Our goal is to investigate the underpinning processes, materials and computational methods necessary for the successful execution and implementation of AM as a viable manufacturing tool. Our interest and focus on underpinning AM leads us to work with diverse industrial sectors and key (international) manufacturing companies to enable unique AM solutions across a myriad of applications. With a strong history of research in AM, the UK now needs to capitalise on its deep fundamental knowledge-base to successfully implement AM in industry. However, as highlighted by the UK AM Strategy's interim report [], the range of technologies that are now being industrially deployed are primarily based on technological developments that are over 20 years old (first introduced for prototyping purposes) and there remain significant barriers to productivity in terms of the speed, reproducibility, accuracy, material range and functionality of produced parts. Hence, today's AM technologies are largely still not ready for implementation into most production environments, nor are they capable enough to service the needs of potential users, particularly when it comes to productivity issues (speed of production or material utility). Our vision driving this platform proposal is to discover, understand and enable industrial implementation of AM solutions to address the issues of productivity and industrial scalability, with our ambition being that this will strengthen our engagement across the full value chain from discovery to deployment. This vision will require close relationships with all stakeholders, including academics in disparate disciplines; the wider innovation ecosystem (particularly the Catapults); manufacturers of AM equipment and materials; organisations involved in policy making; as well as end users in multiple industry sectors. This Platform proposal is therefore centred on both addressing a subject of undoubted (inter)national importance alongside sustaining a research group of international renown. It will enable us to renew our long term research vision, through the exploration and exploitation of new and emerging science, whilst maintaining a focus on overcoming the challenges associated with implementing AM into industry.