Preliminary study of Augmented Reality based manufacturing for further integration of Quality Control 4.0 supported by metrology

Augmented Reality (AR) is a key technology enabling Industry 4.0, which enriches human perspectives by overlaying digital information onto the real world. The maturity of AR technology has grown recently. As processes in the automotive and aeronautic sectors require high quality and near-zero error rates to ensure the safety of end-users, AR can be implemented to facilitate workers with immersive interfaces to enhance productivity, accuracy and autonomy in the quality sector. In order to analyse whether there is a real and growing interest in the use of AR as assisting technology for manufacturing sector in general and quality control in particular, two specific research questions are defined. In addition, two well-known research databases (Scopus, Web of Science) are used for the paper selection phase in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to conduct a preliminary study and evaluate the current development of AR applications in manufacturing sector in order to answer the defined questions. It is found that while the development of AR technology has widely implemented to assign real-time information to several systems and processes in assembly and maintenance sectors, this tendency has only emerged in the quality sector over the last few years. However, AR-based quality control has proved its advantages in improving productivity, accuracy and precision of operators as well as benefits to manufacturing in terms of product and process quality control across different manufacturing phases

Linking design and manufacturing domains via web-based and enterprise integration technologies

The manufacturing industry faces many challenges such as reducing time-to-market and cutting costs. In order to meet these increasing demands, effective methods are need to support the early product development stages by bridging the gap of communicating early design ideas and the evaluation of manufacturing performance. This paper introduces methods of linking design and manufacturing domains using disparate technologies. The combined technologies include knowledge management supporting for product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, aggregate process planning systems, workflow management and data exchange formats. A case study has been used to demonstrate the use of these technologies, illustrated by adding manufacturing knowledge to generate alternative early process plan which are in turn used by an ERP system to obtain and optimise a rough-cut capacity plan

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.

This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level. The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor. The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits. The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process

Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

Laser Welding of Textiles: A creative approach to technology through a reflective craft practice

How can a reflective craft practice progress the development of an emerging production technology for textiles? In an increasingly digital age of manufacture the role of the craft practitioner and particularly hand making processes has had to be reconsidered. There are those that would argue the depletion of goods made by hand simply negates the need for making skills in the development of new products; however, there is an emerging argument that places more value in the potential benefit of craft practice, and particularly making, to bridge between scientific knowledge and the needs of industry. This paper calls upon the research of Dr. Kate Goldsworthy and Helen Paine, who have utilised laser-welding equipment, to explore the benefits of a ‘craft approach’ in assisting the development of an emerging technology, for decorative and functional textile finishing applications. Goldsworthy first worked with the technology in 2008 during her doctoral research, and has used it to develop unique surface finishes for textiles that preserve material purity and can be recycled within a closed-loop system. The inventors of the technology, TWI, fund Paine’s current doctoral research, and wrote the original brief for the project that is essentially technology driven; from which Paine has chosen to investigate new aesthetic and functional opportunities for stretch textiles offered by the equipment. Despite the disparate contexts for the research of Goldsworthy and Paine, their shared background in textile design has led them both to follow a familiar practice-led approach. In this unified approach they have been able to collectively recognise the benefits of working in a hands-on way with the technology. This paper will explore techniques undertaken by both researchers during their investigations and share their insights from working with the laser welding equipment, made available to them by TWI. More widely, the paper will demonstrate the benefit of an intuitive craft approach in the development of an emerging technology

Augmented reality in support of intelligent manufacturing – A systematic literature review

Industry increasingly moves towards digitally enabled ‘smart factories’ that utilise the internet of things (IoT) to realise intelligent manufacturing concepts like predictive maintenance or extensive machine to machine communication. A core technology to facilitate human integration in such a system is augmented reality (AR), which provides people with an interface to interact with the digital world of a smart factory. While AR is not ready yet for industrial deployment in some areas, it is already used in others. To provide an overview of research activities concerning AR in certain shop floor operations, a total of 96 relevant papers from 2011 to 2018 are reviewed. This paper presents the state of the art, the current challenges, and future directions of manufacturing related AR research through a systematic literature review and a citation network analysis. The results of this review indicate that the context of research concerning AR gets increasingly broader, especially by addressing challenges when implementing AR solutions.No funding was received

An approach based on VR to design industrial human-robot collaborative workstations

This paper presents an integrated approach for the design of human-robot collaborative workstations in industrial shop floors. In particular, the paper presents how to use virtual reality (VR) technologies to support designers in the creation of interactive workstation prototypes and in early validation of design outcomes. VR allows designers to consider and evaluate in advance the overall user experience, adopting a user-centered perspective. The proposed approach relies on two levels: the first allows designers to have an automatic generation and organization of the workstation physical layout in VR, starting from a conceptual description of its functionalities and required tools; the second aims at supporting designers during the design of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) by interaction mapping, HMI prototyping and testing in VR. The proposed approach has been applied on two realistic industrial case studies related to the design of an intensive warehouse and a collaborative assembly workstation for automotive industry, respectively. The two case studies demonstrate how the approach is suited for early prototyping of complex environments and human-machine interactions by taking into account the user experience from the early phases of design