The AMRC led an international team to bring a new manufacturing technique to the brink of commercialisation.

Eight academic and industrial partners from four countries collaborated on the European-funded Rapolac (Rapid Production of Large Aerospace Components) project. The three-year project developed the shaped metal deposition (SMD) process from an experimental proof of concept, to an automated manufacturing technology ready for use by a range of companies.

Many metal components for aerospace and other high-value industries are made by cutting large castings down into the desired shape - an expensive process that requires specialist tooling and which generates significant waste.

SMD is an additive process which produces components by welding a continuous metal wire into the desired shape. This reduces the wastage involved in machining parts from a larger block, and removes the need for the expensive tooling used in forging. Using SMD, the time required to design and produce a large aerospace component such as an engine casing can be reduced from nine months to a few weeks.

The SMD technology was initially developed by Rolls-Royce plc, but was not widely adopted for commercial production for several reasons. The TIG welding process had to be manually controlled by a skilled technician, and there was little understanding of the material properties of the parts produced by such an innovative process.

Rolls-Royce licenced the technology to the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing (AMRC), the lead research partner in Rapolac, to move SMD towards commercialisation.

The AMRC team worked with partners at the Universit