The car makers and aerospace manufacturers in the UK, and worldwide, are set to benefit from revolutionary new metal processing and casting techniques with the opening of the Advanced Metal Processing Centre at Brunel University London.
The new centre provides a massive boost for manufacturers to work with Brunel on large-scale research and development activity, enabling innovations – such as novel structures for lightweight car parts – to make the leap from the lab to full-scale industrial trials.
The AMPC, which was officially opened at the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) on 13 June, is funded by £15 million from the UK government, providing the equipment and infrastructure to attract industrial match funding through people and resources from partners such as Constellium and Jaguar Land Rover. This will help to develop the future generation of engineers, designers, scientists and materials specialists, and to accelerate automotive lightweighting through the deployment of world-leading, high-performance aluminium alloys and innovative technologies.
The AMPC’s 1,500 square metres of working space, in a bespoke building on Brunel’s campus in Uxbridge, is the second phase of BCAST’s scale-up facility, following on from 2016’s launch of the Advanced Metal Casting Centre (AMCC).
The industrial and pilot-scale metal processing equipment enables:
- processing and fabrication of extruded metals, such as novel bending processes, machining and advanced joining techniques
- further casting processes, such as gravity die casting and sand casting, adding to those available in the AMCC
- supporting materials characterisation, such as for testing strength and fatigue, and including 3D x-ray tomography.
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For further information please get in touch with:
Joe Buchanunn, Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268821
joe.buchanunn@brunel.ac.uk
