Projects Profile
Project Title
Reconfigurable workholding devices for aerospace components utilising smart
nano-materials
Partnership
Professor Nabil Gindy from University of Nottingham,
Professor Xin Chen from Guangdong University of Technology
Project Aim
The aims of the project are as follows:
1) Evaluate the commercial potential and further develop the prototype devices, based upon market research;
2) Also based on market research, decide upon a suitable commercialization route;
3) Explore further applications of new smart materials to facilitate sustainable international collaboration between UK and China in the long term.
Inspiration for the projects
The fundamental difficulty in advanced manufacturing technology and machining is the art of holding components accurately and efficiently while they are worked upon: the workholding devices that do so are therefore essential tools in the component manufacturing process. Conventionally, dedicated (‘one-to-one’) workholding devices are created for each component to be worked upon. Use of dedicated workholding fixtures in these environments results in long lead times when new fixtures need to be built for new components and disposal costs for redundant fixtures when components are discontinued. As such there is an increasing demand for workholding devices to be flexible to accommodate not just one component but to allow reuse with a range of components.
To meet this demand, the proposed ICUK funded project aims to further develop and commercialize two reconfigurable workholding devices, highly suitable for different roles in the manufacturing process. Both types of device are dynamic, conforming to the geometry of the components they hold, and as such can be reused to hold a range of different components.
Commercial Potential and Further Development
Performance-driven optimal shapes and expensive materials push the boundary of current workholding devices thereby fuelling the growth of reconfigurable workholding devices suitable for regular and irregular geometries. The versatility of these devices and the generic requirement for this across all engineering disciplines means that market is large and growing. The market for reconfigurable workholding devices is large (£201 million import & export in the world for standard vices alone in 2006, In addition, the proposed workholding technology can conform to part geometry, holding the parts more rigidly than conventional dedicated holding devices. As a result, machining speeds can be increased to reduce the machining time and reduce the tooling cost, e.g. approx. £5m may be saved just for workholding cost based on very conservative assumption of 10 variant engines. This is a market we intend to develop post project as we believe this is a long term and more lucrative business for the future.
