The main objective of the proposed research is to transfer to British Industry advanced technologies in making metal mirrors - both existing methods in which the University of Huddersfield has considerable experience, and improvements to be developed during the project. The idea of making mirrors out of metal goes right back to Sir Isaac Newton's reflecting telescope, which he built in 1668 as a way to overcome the colour fringe problem with the simple glass lenses available at that time. His chosen alloy - speculum - was hard and easy to polish, but tarnished quickly, and the ability to reflect light effectively, was not good by modern standards. Aluminium alloys have superseded Speculum, due to aluminium's availability at low cost in large sizes, and because of its superior reflection properties and durability. Whilst it expands and contracts much more than glass with changing temperature, it settles down much more quickly because it conducts heat very well. Moreover, you can drop it or shake it and it will not break! However, aluminium has a distinct disadvantage - it is soft and difficult to polish. For this reason, aluminium mirrors have normally been made in modest sizes by turning using a very high-precision lathe and diamond tools. Unfortunately, diamond-turning inevitably leaves characteristic features on surfaces, which make the mirrors not very good for imaging in 'visible' light. Instead, they are usually used in the more-tolerant infrared (e.g. for night-vision goggles). In metre sizes, aluminium mirrors have normally been machined traditionally, then nickel-plated, as this is easier to polish. But nickel has inferior reflection properties to aluminium, so back to square-1! Worse, the nickel expands differently from aluminium, and the whole mirror can distort with temperature changes. With that background, the project concerns two main avenues of investigation. The first tackles removing the features on diamond-turned mirrors, using computer-controlled polishing machines and robot platforms. The diamond turning will be performed using machines on-campus, with specialised diamond tools provided by the partner CFT Ltd. Then, polishing will proceed in Huddersfield's new laboratory at the STFC-Daresbury site, using highly specialised abrasive slurries from the partner company Kemet Ltd. The technology developed will be transferred to a defence company making optics, QioptiQ Ltd. The second avenue is to develop methods to make bare aluminium mirrors in metre sizes, as needed by partner TMF Ltd. The idea is then to position Kemet as a potential supplier, by transferring technology and so upgrading their lapping and polishing facility. In both cases, a key aspect missing from previous research is investigating the detailed interactions between process steps. The best surface in terms of the heights of errors, may not be best for polishing, because of how those errors are distributed over the surface. We believe the project will break new ground in considering this type of approach for both avenues above.

Coatings are key to the performance of most products and they contribute to sustainability by enhancing the efficiency and extending the life of the products that they protect, as well as by enabling the reduced use of scarce bulk materials. Therefore, coatings are a vital part of the nation's manufacturing industry, contributing to many sectors, including aerospace, energy, automotive and construction. However, until now the UK coatings industry has been severely lagging behind compared to High Value Manufacturing sectors in terms of all aspects of design, development, manufacture, and implementation into products, particularly in terms of the degree of digitalisation achieved (as epitomised in the "Industry 4.0" concept). This EPSRC NetworkPlus in Digitalised Surface Manufacturing is needed because currently there is no UK University that has all the required interdisciplinary expertise in surface engineering and digital manufacturing and there is a lack of 'connected' knowledge in the area of digitalisation of coating manufacturing processes in UK industry. The Network will bring together academic and industrial expertise in multiple disciplines to address the challenges of digitalising the UK coatings manufacturing sector. The Network will create a community that will be able to carry out innovative leading-edge research which will ultimately allow the coatings manufacturing industry to achieve the best-in-class levels of High Value Manufacturing. The development of a UK-wide network around digital methods for surface manufacturing can bring optimum manufacture processes ("right first time") to the surface engineering and advanced coatings community in the UK. The creation of this NetworkPlus will serve to capture and understand the current manufacturing scene and pump-prime digitalisation activity in this area. The new interdisciplinary research community developed within the Network will assist the UK PLC to develop manufacturing methods which are predictable, digital-enabled and more productive, providing the pathway to class-leading coating manufacturing processes. This will bring resilience and improved productivity across all key UK industrial sectors. End-users of the coatings industry span all sectors and thus the economical and societal impact of the Network will be wide-ranging. In turn, the digitalisation of the coatings manufacturing industry will also mean that the benefits of coatings on products are thoroughly recordable and accessible, as is needed to enable statistically robust knowledge of manufactured product lifetimes and performance. This is vital to enabling full life-cycle assessment of coated products and the sustainability implications of the coatings applied, contributing to the long-term aims of a resilient manufacturing.