Advanced Manufacturing

The quantum leap

Quantum computing looks set to play a key role in the future of manufacturing. The IfM’s Professor Chander Velu explains how companies can best prepare.

Solar batteries without the charger? We’re working on that

Michael De Volder tells us how a Friday afternoon experiment led to research on a new low-cost battery design that can be charged directly by light without a separate solar cell or power converter.

How can manufacturers develop sophisticated customisable products at scale, which are affordable both for the manufacturer and for the consumer? IfM researchers have been collaborating with NSG Pilkington on late-stage customisation for large curved glass surfaces.

Green and beautiful: The benefits of embedding electronics in ceramic tiles

Printing electronics into ceramic building materials could offer a functional and aesthetic way to bring solar energy into structures, and encourage the adoption of environmental sensors in buildings.

Liquid assets: fluids in advanced manufacturing

Understanding fluids and their behaviour is key to developing new manufacturing processes and a wide range of applications.

Leonardo da Vinci: the first systematic study of friction

Friction is immensely important to us ? without it, for example, we could not walk or even crawl yet it is only 50 years since a special word tribology was first coined to describe its study. Professor Ian Hutchings who leads the Inkjet Research Centre at the IfM has recently had a paper published on Leonardo da Vinci and his studies of Friction.

Advanced manufacturing - From research to real products

Dr Ronan Daly, from the IfM?s Inkjet Research Centre and founder of the new Fluids in Advanced Manufacturing Group, explains why taking a cross-disciplinary approach to advanced manufacturing research has the potential to deliver solutions to some of the world?s most pressing problems.

Fundamentals of Inkjet Printing: The Science of Inkjet and Droplets

From droplet formation to final applications, this practical book presents the subject in a comprehensive and clear form, using only content derived from the latest published results.

50 years of tribology

From wind farms to data storage, from deodorants to floor tiles, tribology is involved in many aspects of modern life yet most people have never heard of the word, let alone know what it means.

Increasing manufacturing capability and productivity

Professor Bill O’Neill, Head of the Centre for Industrial Photonics, discusses the current role that precision industrial lasers and other technologies are playing in increasing capability and productivity in manufacturing.

Ian Hutchings discusses Leonardo da Vinci and friction

In this podcast, Professor Ian Hutchings, Head of the IfM's Inkjet Research Centre and GKN Professor of Manufacturing Engineering, talks about how he came across some notes by Leonardo da Vinci which he realised represented the first systematic study of the laws of friction.