ITT1121 - FA3D2 Aerospace Infrastructure STAGE 2

The Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing (CAM) at the University Of Nottingham (UoN) works with partners from across the UK and European aerospace industry to deliver industrially focused research into aerospace assembly systems.

Advanced manufacturing is a key research priority area for Nottingham and the university has invested significantly in this research. The university made a strategic investment in automated assembly infrastructure through the Future Automated Aerospace Assembly Demonstrator (FA3D) project, which was commissioned in 2016. Based on the success of this project, funding has been secured from the UK Government's Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund through the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) for development of the second phase of this demonstrator.

The Future Automated Aircraft Assembly Demonstrator Phase 2 (FA3D2) will deliver a national experimental testbed and technology demonstrator in digital and informatics enabled aerospace manufacturing technology. It provides an opportunity for UK based aerospace manufacturing businesses to test, demonstrate and accelerate the implementation of new breakthrough technologies, thus allowing them to compete on productivity, quality and cost with rival offshore businesses.

The demonstrator aims to reduce the non-recurring costs of a product line by implementing a flexible assembly approach. A key feature of the FA3D2 platform will be its flexibility to be reconfigured for different products and assembly processes. This applies to both the physical reconfiguration of equipment and tooling, and also the digital integration architecture. The platform shall be designed to be extensible such that tooling, end effectors, robots etc. may be added in future with minimal disruption to the existing system i.e. a plug and play approach.

FA3D2 aims to address the following key technology themes:

Smart manufacturing

Reconfigurable automation

Precision assembly

Human centred assembly

Adaptive fixturing and tooling

Advanced assembly processes

Smart logistics

Additional information:

Introduction

The Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing (CAM) at the University Of Nottingham (UoN) works closely with partners from across the UK and European aerospace industry to deliver industrially focused research into future aerospace assembly systems. We are an international centre of excellence in assembly systems and smart factory technologies with particular expertise in informatics enabled manufacturing.

CAM has an impressive range of state of the art equipment for the development and demonstration of disruptive manufacturing technologies. It has recently been awarded ?3.8 million from the UK Government through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (in collaboration with the Aerospace Technology Institute) for the Future Automated Aerospace Assembly Demonstrator Phase 2 (FA3D2) platform, which will become the national experimental testbed and technology demonstrator in digital and informatics enabled aerospace manufacturing technologies.

Key Objectives

The Future Automated Aircraft Assembly Demonstrator Phase 2 (FA3D2) will provide an opportunity for UK based aerospace manufacturing businesses to test, demonstrate and accelerate the implementation of new breakthrough technologies, thus allowing them to compete on productivity, quality and cost with rival offshore businesses.

The FA3D2 platform will provide open access to a variety of UK companies with a specific focus on support for manufacturing SMEs. It will also support community engagement to attract future engineering graduates to careers in the aerospace industry.

The objectives of the project are:

• oIntegrate a variety of diverse processes and disruptive technologies
• oDeliver a step change in human centred assembly automation
• oDevelop smart assembly cell architecture and infrastructure to accommodate seamless product variation, increase capacity and reduce costs
• oDemonstrate platform utilising industrial scenarios, to evaluate and validate

Procurement of the system has been split into 2 stages and UoN is releasing stage 1. This includes smart manufacturing (digital infrastructure), reconfigurable automation and precision assembly (large volume metrology). There are a number of individual work packages that can be tendered for individually or combined.

Delivery Notes

Supplier Open Day

The University of Nottingham is holding an open day for organisations who may be interested in tendering for stage 1 work packages. This shall be held on the 23rd July 2019 at the University of Nottingham, from 9am to 12:30 to register and attend the open day, please login to the Nottingham Intend Procurement and register your interest by sending a message.

Is a Recurrent Procurement Type? : No