Development of a highly efficient & commercially available vibro-peening system

Surface engineering plays a critical role in high-value manufacturing by improving product quality, performance, and life-cycle costs. Shot peening is an established surface engineering method used to impart compressive stresses into the surface layer of a part, thereby improving the durability and extending the service life. Unfortunately, shot peening is a line-of-slight process limiting its effectiveness for increasing complex engineering components, particularly those produced by additive manufacturing.

The VibroPeen project a new process will be developed which is cost-effective, flexible, and readily automated, enabling high throughput of parts, including those produced by additive manufacturing, leading to rapid, widespread commercialization within key high-performance engineering sectors (including motorsport, aerospace, space sectors) as well the wider additive manufacturing user community within the next 5 years. This important development will provide a reliable, cost-effective, automated finishing process, which can be applied to a wide range of components, many of which are currently untreated. Extending their service life will yield significant economic benefits to end-users as well as increasing safety and sustainability.

The project addresses the urgent requirement for UK companies to adopt higher productivity, sustainable, knowledge-intensive processes and, moreover, show global technical leadership in a post-Brexit world.