On 28 April the Bit by Bit team travelled to Nottingham to meet members of the Executive Team at the EPSRC Centre for Innovate Manufacturing in Additive Manufacturing, which is hosted by the Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group (3DPRG) at the University of Nottingham.
For this visit the Bit by Bit project team of Tim Minshall, Letizia Mortara, Simon Ford and Dominik Deradjat were joined by Ronan Daly and Ching-Hsien Chen, colleagues from the Inkjet Research Centre at IfM. At Nottingham the group met Prof. Richard Hague, Director of the Centre and Professor of Innovative Manufacturing; Chris Tuck, Deputy Director; Prof. Phill Dickens, Executive Board Member and Professor of Manufacturing Technology, and Phil Reeves, National Outreach Coordinator for the Centre and Managing Director of Econolyst.
During our visit we were treated to a tour of the facilities and heard about the evolution of the group’s research activities. The group has historically worked very closely with industry at higher technology readiness levels; in recent years it has expanded its range of activities to conduct more basic science and experimental work. The group is rapidly expanding, with it this year also becoming the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Additive Manufacturing.
As well as hearing about their activities, we also shared some of our current work on mapping the emergence of 3D printing. As our hosts have significantly more knowledge about the industry we received some excellent feedback on the content within the maps, had some outstanding questions resolved and some pointers on issues that we could investigate. We look forward to further discussions with the centre and participating at the Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing International Conference at Nottingham in July.
Image source: http://www.3dp-research.com/About-EPSRC-additive-manufacturing
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