Light-weighting Conference

The Light-weighting Conference provided deep insights into the future of mobility through powerful presentations and real-world technology demonstrators: from machining thin wall aerostructures and additive manufacture of satellite components, through to innovative castings of complex airframes, the design of joints containing dissimilar materials, and one-way-assembly.

Technical presentations

Presentations were given from experts in the following organisations:

• ACT Blades

• BAE Systems

• BEIS

• GKN

• Group Rhodes

• Laing O’Rourke

• Lightweight Manufacturing Centre (NMIS)

• Lotus

• McLaren Automotive

• MSC Software

• Northern Aircraft

• Rolls-Royce

• Rotherham Council

• Shape Machining

• Sheffield Council

• Tata Steel

• Tinsley Bridge

• Ultimate Battery Company

• The University of Sheffield

• Williams Advanced Engineering

More details: Light-weighting conference agenda (PDF, 1.2MB)

Sectors and technologies

Topics of discussion and presentation included:

• Aerospace

• Automotive

• Construction

• Rail, space

• Composites manufacturing

• Machining

• Casting

• High strength and lightweight metals

• Additive manufacturing

• Battery technology

Full list of companies which attended

AMRC capabilities

Delegates of the Light-weighting Conference attending tours to showcase the AMRC’s capabilities in the following fields.

Composites manufacturing

Automated production - utilising automated fibre placement and advanced robotic filament winding to demonstrate the cost and performance benefits of the technologies.

Advanced curing - enabling technologies and autoclave alternatives that will reduce costs and energy, whilst enhancing throughput and quality of components.

Novel materials and processing - the development of processes and materials to improve net shape component manufacture and material properties.

Dry fibre technologies - working with traditional textile technologies, such as weaving and braiding, and pushing their capabilities beyond the conventional standards to produce novel composite fibre architectures.

Composites machining - making subtractive composite processing affordable, fast and safe, so that it is more attractive to machine a high value-add component to net shape than to use any other technology.

Machining

Lightweight thin wall machining - milling part features with thin wall characteristics on a variety of materials, whilst maintaining dimensional accuracy and straightness.

One-way assembly - The ability to manufacture fastener-ready holes in composite-metallic stacks that fully comply to specification without the need to disassemble, inspect, deburr, clean or rework.

Castings

Titanium investment casting - for weight optimised aircraft structural components.

Optimisation of the design for manufacture - reducing components and wall thickness.

Design and prototyping

Design for additive manufacturing - allowing complex design geometries to be produced in polymers and metals that are topology optimised for lightweight structures.

Analysis - developing and validating analyses for many structural, fluid flow and thermal design questions.

Robotics and automation

Lightweight reconfigurable carbon composite robotic machine tools - for faster drilling and milling applications and without having to make major investment in purpose-built machine tools, which cannot easily be moved.

Robotic composite machining - for improved accuracy, increased throughput and safer working environments.

Additive manufacturing

The benefits of utilising powder metallurgy to produce lighter weight parts with reduced parts counts and increased functionality.