Handbook

3D printing technique has rapidly evolved into an important advanced manufacturing technique in the past decade, seeing vast applications in the aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, mining, and medical sectors. Nowadays, many countries around the globe have positioned 3D printing as one of the top strategic techniques to underpin the sustainable development of their economy, as evidenced by the wider take-up of the 3D printing technique by many world-leading companies including GE, Boeing, SpaceX, BMW, Stryker, etc. However, most of the currently adopted 3D printing techniques have a severe limitation in terms of manufacturing speed and attainable part size, which ubiquitously hinders the further implementation and development of this key technique. Therefore, it is of enormous importance and urgency to develop a fast speed and large-scale 3D printing technique and this is where robotic techniques can merge into and add great value.

This course aims to equip our students with the cutting-edge knowledge on the rapid and large-scale robotic 3D printing technique based on wire arc additive manufacturing and provide our students with project-based hands-on experience to learn the key aspects of this emerging robotic 3D printing technique. The content of this course includes metal 3D printing based on wire arc additive manufacturing technique, optimisation of the 3D printing process using computational modeling, advanced metals and alloys for various industries, in-situ monitoring of the 3D printing process for robust manufacturing and part qualification, kinematics modelling of robotic arms for off-line programming, path and trajectory planning and optimisation for 3D printing, task-oriented motion coordination of multiple robotic arms based on real-time sensing, etc.