Provide initial overview of manufacturing processes in the context of a simple, commercially available assembly (e.g. an electrical socket or plug) to introduce the concepts of engineering design, bills of materials, material properties, manufacturing processes, metrology and tolerancing and assembly processes.
Describe and analyse a range of modern manufacturing processes that are increasingly used in medical device, pharmaceutical, drug delivery, engineering and associated industries.
Focus on selected range of manufacturing technologies to support both site visits to leading manufacturing plants in Ireland and to facilitate group project work based on the concepts covered in class and laboratory work.
Provide the background information and understanding to facilitate a minor project based on the theoretical design, manufacture and assembly processes for a simple assembly similar to that described above.
Design Engineering: Analysis of commercially available simple assemblies (e.g. electrical plug or socket) to determine overall design characteristics, assembly methods, materials and their properties, joining processes and other pertinent features.
Surface Finish: Machining processes and associated finishes. Reasons for controlling surface finish. Measurement of surface finish, Ra & Rz.
Part Validation: Basic metrological processes, go & no go gauges, co-ordinate measuring machines.
Jigs & Fixtures: Degrees of freedom, part location, clamping, drill bushes and indexing methods.
Manufacture with Plastics: Compression moulding; transfer moulding; extrusion; injection moulding; blow moulding; rotational moulding; vacuum forming, manufacture of components from composite plastic materials. Machines, tool design and materials used in the above applications. Design elements of polymer components.
Modern manufacturing methods: Rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing processes including FDM, SLA, SLS and associated processes.
Press tools: Introduction to press tool technology, tool materials, strip layout and cutting forces.
CNC Machining: CNC machine elements. Coordinate systems, incremental & absolute coordinates. G-Code Programming of simple two dimensional profiles. Tool length and radius compensation.
Quality Management: Terms & definitions, inspection methods, quality circles, quality costs, vendor appraisal, quality management systems, ISO 9001, control charts.
Production Management: Project network analysis including introduction to critical path analysis and resource planning.
Design Project: Group design of simple commercial assembly similar to that mentioned above including determination of required component service and processing properties, manufacturing and assembly methods, inspection and quality assurance techniques, design documentation including bill of materials and factory routing instructions.
Laboratory Exercises: CMM Programming; CNC Programming; robotics and metrology exercises.
