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

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.

The multidisciplinary research proposed in this project has the potential to benefit a broad range of industries and different aspects of society. New advances in technology are leading to new products, which pose manufacturing challenges. For example, the potentially large arrays of discrete units, which form a metamaterial (a structure/device which takes its properties primarily from it physical structure as opposed to its chemical composition), are not necessarily amenable to manufacture using current technology. Modern society is also making increased demands on how we use products, for example reduction in short term usage of plastics for environmental reasons.

This project will develop new knowledge and processes that will impact industrial and academic research communities. The work in the proposal will develop from theory to demonstration, a revolutionary new approach to manufacturing that has re-use and re-configuration of material at its centre. The understanding of how discrete elements can be made to physically connect and disconnect in a switchable and repeatable fashion would be a new concept for manufacturing and requires underlying physical processes to be understood and modelled. The use of magnetic and acoustic fields to manipulate elements is not new, but its use in manufacturing products from discrete elements is new. The results will improve both the manufacture of existing products and lead to the potential to realise new products designs with new properties.

This project will impact the economy by leading to the creation of new manufacturing processes that will ultimately lead to the creation of new industry around it, creating wealth and new jobs in a range of disciplines, including research and development and manufacturing. This will also have an indirect effect on other industries, since the new processes will open up the possibility of realising new products, potentially leading to further job creation. There will also be the training provision associated with developing a workforce with the required skill sets to support industries using the new manufacturing process. The impact will be both national and international. The UK has an international reputation in advanced manufacturing and numerous sectors, such as aerospace, automotive and energy benefit from this. The output from this proposal and the development of a new manufacturing process will help these industries meet new societal needs, develop a sustainable economy and be competitive in both an evolving world and post-referendum national economy.

The new knowledge and techniques developed in manufacturing products that allows inherent re-configuration and re-use of materials will benefit society in several ways. It will help reduce waste by allowing material to be more easily re-used and existing products to be re-configured, for example to extend their useful life following wear/damage, to improve aero-dynamics to reduce fuel consumption, or to allow use in a new or changing environment. This will have associated impacts on health and quality of life. The wider impact of sustainable and more optimal use of products has the potential to lead to policy changes in manufacturing due to its positive impact for example, on the effect of diminishing resources and pollution on people and eco-systems.