There's something beautiful and strangely familiar about the series of photographs on the walls of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) North West.
"They're all images of additively manufactured components," explains Evren Yasa, the centre's Head of Additive Manufacturing, pointing to the detailed close-ups of parts, microstructures, and live deposition across various additive manufacturing (AM) processes.
The AMRC North West serves as the nucleus of all AM across the organisation. It's here in Blackburn, an industrial town which was once a major contributor to the cotton industry in the North of England, where additive R&D projects are taking on real manufacturing challenges and spearheading research into promising new processes.
"Our mission is to help UK manufacturers to adopt AM technologies," Yasa says. "That's easy to say, but moving from a laboratory to a qualified, shop-floor process is where the real work happens."
The AMRC North West works at the intersection between academia and industry, maturing AM through government and private funded projects, and working with UK companies – including SMEs and major manufacturers like its neighbour BAE Systems – and international partners to derisk and increase the technology's readiness for applications across defence and aerospace.
"There is strong synergy between the centres," Yasa says of how the AMRC North West feeds into the wider AMRC network. "We work closely with the composites group to produce complex tooling geometries using AM, and we collaborate with the machining group to advance hybrid manufacturing strategies, optimising subtractive post-processing to manage residual stresses and control distortion in printed components."
