Ebook: Advances in Manufacturing Technology XXXI

The International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR) is a major event for academics and industrialists who are engaged in manufacturing research. Held annually in the UK since the late 1970s, and called the National Conference on Manufacturing Research (NCMR) until 2002, the conference is renowned as a friendly and inclusive environment that brings together a broad community of researchers who share a common goal: developing and managing the technologies and operations that are key to sustaining the success of manufacturing businesses. For over three decades, ICMR has been the main manufacturing research conference organised in the UK, successfully bringing researchers, academics and industrialists together to share their knowledge and expertise. Initiated as a National Conference by the Consortium of UK University Manufacturing and Engineering (COMEH), it became an International Conference in 2003. COMEH is an independent body established in 1978. Its main aim is to promote manufacturing engineering education, training and research. To achieve this, the Consortium maintains a close liaison with government bodies concerned with the training and continuing professional development of engineers, while responding to the appropriate consultative and discussion documents and other initiatives. COMEH is represented on the Engineering Professor's council (EPC) and it organises and supports manufacturing engineering education research conferences and symposia. The hosts for the National Conferences on Manufacturing Research (NCMR) were:

1985 Nottingham

1986 Napier

1987 Nottingham

1988 Sheffield

1989 Huddersfield

1991 Hatfield

1992 Central England

1993 Bath

1994 Loughborough

1995 De Montfort

1996 Bath

1997 Glasgow Caledonian

1998 Derby

1999 Bath

2000 East London

2001 Cardiff

2002 Leeds Metropolitan

In 2002, the conference was accorded the title International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR) to reflect new trends in manufacturing engineering internationally and to promote the exchange of research and engineering application experiences to

a wider audience. The ICMR has, since its introduction, incorporated the NCMR. The 15th ICMR incorporates the 32nd NCMR. The host universities for ICMR have been:

2003 Strathclyde

2004 Sheffield Hallam

2005 Cranfield

2006 Liverpool John Moores

2007 Leicester De Montfort

2008 Brunel

2009 Warwick

2010 Durham

2011 Glasgow Caledonian

2012 Aston

2013 Cranfield

2014 Southampton Solent

2015 Bath

2016 Loughborough

2017 Greenwich

Acknowledgements

On behalf of the ICMR2017 organising committee first foremost we would like to thank COMEH for inviting the University of Greenwich to host ICMR 2017. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of the contributing authors for the high quality papers submitted, the reviewers for their time and constructive comments, the keynote speakers for sharing their experiences to the delegates and the local organising committee for their meticulous preparation of the conference. We would like to acknowledge FESTO and BAE Systems for their sponsorship and support for the conference. We wish every delegate a successful conference and look forward to welcoming you in London.

James Gao, Mohammed El Souri and Simeon Keates

Editors

Considering flexible manufacturing of large gears in small and medium batch productions, a five-axis CNC machine is a good choice because it is cheaper and easier to be obtained compared to a dedicated bevel gear cutting machine. Company Heller recently released a new cutting method for bevel gears on its five-axis machines. In this method, a disk milling cutter replaces a dedicated face-milling cutterhead. However, its mathematical model is not revealed due to commercial considerations. This research aims to establish a mathematical model of disk tool cutting method based on the target tooth surface. The tooth surface is first approximated using B-Spline surface fitting method for refining cutter-contact (CC) points. The mathematical model of cutting tool is established. The five-axis coordinates of table-table type five-axis machines are then derived through the inverse kinematics. Finally, an experiment is done to verify the correctness of the proposed mathematical models.

Abrasive waterjet machining is a novel method of machining complex shapes and profiles. Surface roughness is a widely used machining characteristic to define the quality of the machined components. This present study reports the effects of workpiece material thickness, abrasive mass flow rate and standoff distance on surface roughness while performing abrasive waterjet machining. A L9 Taguchi array is used for the design of experimentation signal to noise ratio and analysis of variance is carried out. The experimental results show that the most influential parameter affecting surface roughness is workpiece thickness.

This paper investigates chemical etching as a potential temporary solution to severe adhesive wear experienced during forming of commercially-pure titanium. The aim was to identify contributing factors and experimentally quantify their effects on the etching of CP-Ti and Vanadis 23 tool steel.

A comprehensive literature review identified a promising etchant solution, containing 6.5% hydrofluoric acid, 2% formic acid and 2% triethanolamine. A full factorial experiment was designed to test the effects of three factors – hydrofluoric acid concentration, temperature, and time – with statistical analysis to interpret and validate the results.

The results confirmed that increasing any of the factors tested leads to a significant increase in titanium dissolution, while only temperature and concentration increases led to a significant increase in steel dissolution. Therefore, a 20°C solution of 3.5% hydrofluoric acid and an etching duration of 35 minutes is recommended for removing adhered titanium without significantly affecting the steel.

Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing, is seen amongst some technologists, designers and engineers as the “second industrial revolution”. This is because of the advantages AM can bring to product design and development and with the advancement of AM machine technology, the dream of it one day replacing some conventional manufacturing techniques may slowly become a reality. However there are many challenges to overcome before then, these include machine and material costs, production speed, attitudes towards new, often expensive AM technologies and a lack of reliable material design data. This paper will outline a solution to the lack of available material design data through a material characterization regime that will enable efficient component design, also enhancing how AM is perceived and promoting its adoption as a viable manufacturing technique. The development of the material characterization regime focused on ULTEM 9085, determining which material properties were required, ensuring efficient dimensional measurement and test methods were used, before the manufacture and testing of tensile and compressive samples. Finally a finite element analysis (FEA) truth test was performed to assess the reliability of the data produced.

In order to improve the shear performance and service life of the oblique blade guillotine, the AlTiN coating was deposited on the edge of the tool by arc ion plating. The microstructures, nanomechanical properties and the shear properties of the coatings and were studied. The microstructure of AlTiN coating was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). It was found that the average thickness of coating was 3.9 μm, which was composed of CrN and AlTiN, and the surface of AlTiN coating was dense, and the composition of the coating phase are mainly hexagonal h-AlN, cubic c-AlN, TiN. The mechanical properties of AlTiN coating were studied by nanoindentation and scratching. The results showed that the nano-hardness of the coating was 33.207 GPa, which is 1.49 times that of the substrate. And the adhesion force reached 57.44 N. The shear test of electrical steel plate was carried out by using NC oblique blade guillotine machine. It was found that the shearing performance was improved obviously. The quality of shearing section of the electrical silicon steel sheet is improved. the cross section is relatively flat. The distribution of the characteristic band is uniform and the shear zone height increases significantly.

In shearing processing experiments of copper sheet of 0.5mm thick, The effects of shear clearance on shearing surface morphology, edge hardening and shearing force are studied. The results show that the shear clearance directly affects the shearing surface morphology and the degree of work hardening. With the increase of the shear clearance, the height of shearing zone decreases gradually, but the height of the fracture zone, rollover and burr increase gradually. The degree and area of work hardening increase initially and then decrease, when the relative clearance (c/t) is 8%, the hardness value and depth of work hardening reach the maximum value. The shearing surface morphology is closely related to the work hardening. Along rollover side to the burr side, the hardness value increases initially and then decreases, and the maximum work hardening value occurs at the border region between the shearing zone and the fracture zone.

Finite element analysis (FEA) on conventional drilling of two bio-composite materials, consist of hybrid woven flax-basalt and woven basalt fibre with vinyl ester matrix, designated as composite materials A and B respectively, has been conducted. The simulation results using LS-DYNA and ANSYS software depict that different reinforcements (flax and basalt fibres) of the composite materials significantly influenced the degree of resistance, strength, deformation and elasticity exhibited during the machining process. It was observed that drilling-induced damage were experienced in different degrees by the materials. The quality of the holes produced was affected by the characteristics of these materials, when experimentally validated. Also, significant differences in tensile strength and impact of the drilling operation on the plies of the two materials were observed. Material A experienced higher stress and lower tensile strength, resulting into a higher level of push-out delamination, uncut-fibre and fibre pull-out, among other rampant drilling-induced damage, than material B. Both materials possessed high stress and deformation, which were more at the edges (entry and exit) of the drilled holes rather than the centre point where the drill impacted the hole. The equivalent elastic strain further shows a high level of impact at the surface of material A, unlike material B. Comparatively, the composite material B (woven basalt fibre reinforced polymer) has a better machinability when compared with hybrid material A (woven flax-basalt). Hence, it implies that the FRP composite materials responded to damage differently under same machining (drilling) process and condition.

The understanding of powder properties and rheology is important to many sectors including food processing, pharmaceutical, mass finishing and most recently metal additive manufacturing. This paper reports on new insight and knowledge acquired of soda-lime based silica glass powder. Acomprehensive series of tests were completed to fully characterize the powder in respect of flowability, particle size and distribution (granulometry), morphology, apparent and tap density, and chemical composition. It is shown that a weighted consideration must be given to each of these properties dependent on the planned application, and powder transfer system. Two different methodologies were employed to evaluate flowability; a traditional technique used to assess the bulk behaviour based on density, and advance techniques using a rheometer instrument to measure bulk, dynamic and shear properties. Powder constituents were identified by x-ray fluorescence (XRF), except for Sulphur trioxide which was assessed by an inert gas diffusion technique.

Laser drilling is a widely-used manufacturing process especially in high value manufacturing product components such as jet engine and gas turbine. Manufacturing process efficiency and quality as well as operation cost are very important factors for companies to survive in the competitive environment. To create good quality product with minimum cost, optimum process parameters selection is necessary as well as comprehending the process. In this paper, technical challenges of the laser drilling manufacturing processes integrated with the product quality and process parameters has been discussed. This study also reveals some future research direction in the area of laser drilling.

Fiber reinforced polymer composites with their outstanding performance are increasingly used in aerospace products. Currently aeronautical composites are mainly fabricated using autoclave curing technologies, but the long cure cycle, high energy consumption and large temperature gradients in composite thickness seriously restrict its further development in materials processing. As an alternative, microwave curing technology can realize a fast and energy saving curing process with less temperature gradients, and gains more and more interests in recent years. However, it was found that the microwave cured composites have very high void contents, which directly leads to huge reductions in mechanical properties. To solve this problem, a high-pressure microwave curing method was proposed in this paper. Several key technologies about the associated equipment have been introduced. Experimental results indicated that the composite voids have been significantly eliminated, and the mechanical properties of high-pressure microwave cured composites are comparable to those of autoclave cured counterparts.

This paper presents an experimental investigation on an important measure of the production inaccuracy, known as overcut, in wire electric discharge machining of WC-Co composite material (with 24% Co). Effect of several process parameters such as pulse on time, pulse off time, peak current and gap voltage on the response (overcut) was evaluated through designed experiments using response surface methodology. It was observed that pulse off time and gap voltage are the significant parameters affecting overcut. The optimized value of overcut was found to be 0.042 mm from the confirmation experiments. An improvement of over 10% was achieved over the best value obtained in experiments through optimization.

The aluminium alloy 5083-H321 sheets are selected for joining through Friction stir welding with a cylindrical pin profile stirring tool. Four different process parameters—rotational speed, traverse speed, tool tilt angle and Initial heating time (dwell time)—have been investigated by conducting experiments using central composite design. Empirical relationship between the process parameters and the response—tensile strength—is developed through response surface methodology. The developed model reveals that traverse speed and dwell time have a more dominating effect on the selected response as compared to the other process parameters.

While striving to mitigate the risk to human health and the environment, chemical substance regulations continue to impose greater legislative burdens on industry, which ultimately creates business continuity risk. Compliance to these regulations requires greater investment which ultimately undermines profits. Furthermore, as regulations vary between countries or politico-economic unions, impact on manufacturers is dependent on which areas of the world that its supply chain is most prevalent. A chemical substance reporting system for manufacturing companies requires information on parts and manufacturing processes that are both defined in-house and within the external supply chain. Without information on chemical substance uses within the downstream supply chain, manufacturers cannot fulfil their legislative obligations or effectively manage business continuity risk. Often the biggest hurdle to collecting this information is supply chain engagement, which is made more difficult with multiple, different industry standards and data exchange formats. As more and more chemical substances become heavily regulated, manufacturers require increased volumes of downstream supply chain information on a routine basis. The aim of this paper is to identify existing good practices which could be utilized to implement chemical substance reporting systems for manufacturing companies.

Experimental tests have been conducted to investigate the ultrasonic consolidation process of fiber optics inside Aluminum. It allows surface embedding of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) to protect them from exposure to open environment. This particular process requests small amount of heat created at the contact interface to embed the fibers. Extensive experiments were carried out to understand the process of ultrasonic consolidation and the effect of its related parameters such as waves amplitude and welding time on the process with a selected host material e.g. aluminum. The ultrasonic frequency was kept constant throughout the tests.

The shear test of 0.20–0.65 mm electrical steel sheet was carried out at the same relative lateral clearance and shear rate, The morphology of the specimen after shearing was detected by SEM and white light interferometer (2D/3D). The results show: Under the same relative backlash, the thinner thickness of the plate, the greater relative height of rollover, the narrower relative height of shear zone, the wider relative height of fracture zone, and the greater fracture angle, the more rough the fracture surface, the more obvious the dimples feature.

Since the introduction of assembly lines, they are being used for the mass production. Due to the concept of mass customization, Mixed-Model Assembly Lines (MMAL) are becoming more popular. Various Industries are forced to shift to MMAL because of customer demand of more customized products. Assembly line balancing and model sequencing are the two major problems in MMAL. This paper deals with the Model sequencing problem in MMAL. A modified Multi-Objective NEH (MO-NEH) algorithm was proposed to optimize the conflicting objectives (flow time and make-span). For this purpose, NEH was integrated with PROMTHEE-II, a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making technique (MCDM). A mathematical model was presented for three Objectives; make-span, Idle time and flow time. A case study of hydraulic pumps MMAL was conducted. Results of proposed MO-NEH was compared with existing NEH variants and it showed that proposed algorithm outperformed the existing variants in optimizing the objectives simultaneously.

In grinding it is often desirable to have a control system that can utilise auxiliary Process Control and Monitoring equipment to perform optimised production cycles either using manual (operator) or automatic (CNC) intervention. Implemented functions include wheel balancing, in-process gauging, and touch detection (via acoustic emission and wheel power monitoring). These units can be separate and from different manufacturers, or an integrated subsystem from a single supplier. For optimised machining (including Adaptive Control) the monitoring equipment should be tightly linked to the machine control, with signal states and data values being easily available for action and analysis. It would therefore be highly beneficial to provide for the use of process monitoring equipment as part of the fundamental machine control design. Many elements of the machine and control system – such as the operator control panel and the axis movement or motion control features – can be considered as objects or devices with comparable structures but differing characteristics. If external monitoring equipment is similarly treated as a generic device configured as part of the machine via a standardized interface, its integration and operation can be simplified considerably. A generic software structure abstracts the underlying details of a device's implementation and allows simpler incorporation of additional functionality to the machine. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a grinding machine controller with an Open Device Interface (ODI) software framework that connects a variety of monitoring units to the machine process control.

Reducing machining time is one of the ways to improve the global competitiveness and productivity. The objective of this paper is to optimize feedrates of milling operation via process modeling, numerical experiments, and an intelligent algorithm under multiple constraints. The approach proposed attempts to overcome drawbacks of human error and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software through efficient cutting parameters of given toolpaths. First, machining simulations were performed with the support of CAM system in order to generate the NC program. The milling process was analyzed and re-simulated using the experimental platform to calculate material removal rates and instantaneous forces at the specific time. To obtain the machined accuracy, a new mechanism for milling process has been considered. The cutting force and acceleration as well as deceleration time were considered as machining constraints and integrated into the developed system. The optimizing strategy is the feedrates scheduling, which increases the feedrates to an allowable level to make the process more efficient, taking into consideration the required constraints. Subsequently, an intelligent algorithm was proposed to find real-optimal feedrates and generate more-efficient toolpaths. Finally, machining simulations using optimal values were conducted to evaluate time saving potentials. The results indicated that machining time could be reduced approximately 22%, compared to un-optimal case. Consequently, this work is expected as a contribution to make the milling process more efficient

The increasing complexity and demands of assembly operations in manufacturing has been shown to lead to increased cognitive load in assembly workers. Previous work has outlined the complexity of an assembly worker's situation both in terms of difficulty and speed of work and there have been a few attempts at creating frameworks and methods for understanding the key aspects of what creates increased cognitive load. This paper presents a tool for assessing cognitive load in manufacturing, primarily assembly. The paper presents the method and an accompanying tool as well as some insights derived from this method development. The intended contribution of the work is to make a difference in reducing the cognitive load of assembly workers on the shop floor, thus focusing the development on applicability and usability of the tool in practice.

Concentrated boarding describes the phenomenon when rail passengers congregate in certain areas of the platform, such as at main entrances and staircases. This influences the distribution of passengers throughout the carriages, which can negatively affect passenger comfort, safety at the platform train interface, efficiency of the rail network, and the reputation of rail travel as a whole. This project aimed to determine whether concentrated boarding occur in rail stations in the UK in order to understand its relevance for future rolling stock and infrastructure design and its associated manufacturing research. Video recording technology was used to observe the movements of passengers in Oxford Station, and data was collected for nine trains. By reviewing the recordings, the number of passengers boarding through each door of the trains was determined, and the boarding distributions along the length of the platform were plotted. Several reasons for noted trends were offered, and potential solutions proposed. The use of real time information could be invaluable to minimise concentrated boarding, as it would allow passengers to make informed decisions as to where they could board trains to have a better journey experience. These findings indicate the relevance of a human-centred design process, particularly the user research stages in the process of defining priorities for manufacturing and engineering.

Interconnects are a necessity in microfluidic assembly to link micro or nanoscale features to workable platforms and provide world-to-chip access. Packaging issues can hold back progress in microfluidic or biosensor projects and are recognised an underestimated challenge in microfluidic manufacturing and production. Conventionally interconnections between microfluidic modules are obtained via a screw fastening or clamping systems both reliant on operator screw torque which can modify flow behaviour from one module to the other and in turn affect fluidic related performance such as hydrodynamic separation efficiencies. The proposed solution is a microfluidic snap-fit assembly. We described the design, model and test of a snap-fit package enabled by additive manufacturing for microfluidic applications.