North of England

We specialise in dimensional inspection and measurement of complex components and assemblies using a wide variety of tactile and non-contact equipment, bespoke measurement training and consultancy. We offer a fast response service for difficult to measure components that require highly-skilled techniques traceable to National Standards. Our services provide high-confidence inspection results within timescales that critical production cycles demand.

Our Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) research is developing low cost sensor based solutions to help manufacturers meet emerging demands for productivity within supply chains. We offer continuous access to a reliable source of experts and affordable inspection skills at a time when customers are having increased difficulty in retaining high-calibre metrology and inspection staff of their own. Our Manufacturer Measurement Network (MMN) provides easy access to knowledge transfer, networking and new technologies.

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NPL is carrying out research which is directly relevant to this region. We can help companies make better measurements, characterise new and existing materials and support new technologies.

Industrial digitalisation

Realisation and demonstration of the benefits of industrial digitalisation within advanced machining systems.

The NPL North team are collaborating with academic and industrial partners to create solutions and resolves challenges to improve the metrology processes and technologies being developed in this field. The outputs of this research will accelerate innovation within advanced machinery research and development, resulting in improved productivity for UK industry.

Dimensional metrology

LVM. development of a set of standard tests to quantify the performance of 6DOF multi-target large volume metrology (LVM) systems for dynamic (moving) applications. The development of these test methods will allow the applications of novel LVM technologies to be extended to new areas including robot guidance, inline monitoring of industrial robots, and manufacturing process control. This research will enable novel UK built multi-target LVM systems to enhance the performance of industrial robots and increase flexibility of automation.

Dynamic monitoring and machine learning in manufacturing

We are currently engaged in multiple projects to probe and address the metrological challenges faced by manufacturing processes as they become increasingly digitalised and look to incorporate technologies such as predictive maintenance, digital twinning, and cobot-/ robot-facilitated automation. By quantifying process and process-adjacent variables and parameters this information can be exploited for improvements in equipment uptime, material efficiency, process control, and many others. One such project, funded by UKRI through the Strength in Places fund and a part of the Advanced Machinery and Productivity Initiative research portfolio, is the Dynamic Monitoring of Intelligent Machine Systems project. It is a five year project aiming to address measurement-related challenges within the context of machining systems, with three broad focuses:

• The development of quantifiably accurate, traceable, in-process monitoring systems

• The creation of generalised digital requirement specifications for integrating metrological process data and process-related metadata
• Improvements upon the integration and automation of metrology on the production floor, with particular attention paid to interoperability.

In a similar vein, the Digital Engineering - Industrial Internet of Things & Machine Learning project concerns the implementation and testing of an affordable, non-invasive, machine learning-based approach to predictive maintenance and quality control for subtractive manufacturing processes.

Digital calibration & verification

As industry adopts increasingly digital technologies, be it automation, virtualisation, digital twinning, etc., it is becoming increasingly critical for quality infrastructure to evolve to support it. As the UK's National Measurement Institute, NPL are already engaged in several projects to adapt to the evolving needs of industry - from machine-readable calibration certificates to automated measurement service data-handling and reporting. As these activities unfold, we stand ready to assist other organisations to implement or take advantage of these developments.