What happens when you cross LEGO and a Star Trek Replicator?

今天制造的大多数产品都有一个最终形式，基本上是由制造过程固定的，例如，通过注塑成型生产的塑料瓶（熔化塑料颗粒，然后将它们注射到模具中），通过在电路板上蚀刻电子轨道生产的电路（化学去除不需要的金属以创建所需的电路图案），或通过加工一块金属生产的汽车发动机部件（使用工具去除不需要的金属）。这使得所产生的产品既固有地对用户/环境需求的变化缺乏灵活性（例如，需要更大的瓶子而不替换现有的瓶子），也难以在其使用寿命结束时回收（例如，回收金属汽车零件是消耗能源和时间的，需要收集零件并重新加工，例如通过熔化和重新成型）。相比之下，许多人从小就知道数字可重构架构的好处，例如乐高镶嵌砖和其他相关玩具。它们允许从有限的构建块集制造产品，然后使用“反向”过程随时修改或解构，而不会产生不必要的浪费。该项目将开发一种制造工艺，使用非接触式技术反复组织、组装和拆卸积木来生产产品——换句话说，“类似乐高的21世纪工程积木”。第一个任务是开发可以反复连接和断开的单个块/元素。这可以通过乐高之类的机械方法来实现，但这会限制积木的形状、物理属性以及它们的定位和连接方式。相反，我们将开发一些方法，可以通过一些刺激来远程打开和关闭，类似于按下遥控器上的按钮来切换电视频道。材料的某些特性使得这种连接可以通过热和磁场等刺激来实现和控制。第二项任务是对积木进行排序，并将它们移动到一个可以连接的位置。我们将使用非接触式技术来做到这一点，即，我们将使用声波和磁场在块上产生的力，而不是使用机械臂等设备进行物理拾取和放置块。这两个过程（连接和分类/移动块）的结合将导致一个原型制造过程，有点像《星际迷航》的复制器，它允许不同的产品形成一组标准块，然后拆卸，回收，然后重新使用，以建立一个新的或重新配置的产品。然而，在我们的例子中，构建块是在中尺度（0.01-10mm），而不是分子水平。然后，我们将测试这种原型制造工艺，以制造几种特别适合它的产品，例如具有广泛应用的超材料，从改善电信到使环境更安静。

The majority of products manufactured today have a final form that is essentially fixed by the manufacturing processes, for example plastic bottles produced by injection moulding (melting plastic pellets and then injecting them into a mould), an electrical circuit produced by etching electrical tracks onto a circuit board (chemically removing unwanted metal to create the desired circuit pattern), or a car engine part produced by machining a piece of metal (removing unwanted metal using a tool). This makes the resulting products both inherently inflexible to changes in user/environment demand (for example the need for a larger bottle without replacing the existing one) and difficult to recycle at the end of their useful life (for example recycling metal car parts is energy and time consuming, requiring parts to be collected and re-processed, such as by melting down and re-forming). In contrast, many people know the benefits of digital reconfigurable architectures from childhood, i.e. LEGO studded bricks and other related toys. They allow a product to be manufactured from a finite set of building blocks and then readily modified or de-constructed using an "inverse" process without generating unnecessary waste. This project will develop a manufacturing process which uses non-contact techniques to repeatedly organise, assemble and disassemble building blocks to produce a product - in other words, "LEGO-like 21st century engineering building blocks". The first task is to develop individual blocks/elements that can be repeatedly connected and disconnected. This could be done using mechanical means such as with LEGO, but this puts limits on the shapes of the blocks, their physical properties and how they can be positioned and connected. Instead we will develop methods that can be remotely switched on and off by some stimulus, similar to pressing a button on a remote control to change the channel on a TV. Certain properties of materials allow such connections to be made and controlled using stimuli such as heat and magnetic fields. The second task is to sort blocks and move them into a position so that they can be connected. We will do this using non-contact techniques, i.e. instead of physically picking and placing the blocks using a device such as a robotic arm, we will use forces generated on the blocks by acoustic and magnetic fields. The combination of these two processes (connection and sorting/moving blocks) will lead to a prototype manufacturing processes that is a bit like the Star Trek Replicator, which allows different products to be built form a set of standard blocks and then disassembled, recycled and then re-used to built a new or reconfigured product. However, in our case the building blocks are at the mesoscale (0.01-10mm) as opposed to the molecular level. We will then test this prototype manufacturing process to make several products for which it is particularly suited, such as metamaterials which have a wide range of applications from improving telecommunication to making environments quieter.