Back to search

FORINFRA-Nasj.sats. forskn.infrastrukt

MANULAB: Norwegian Manufacturing Research Laboratory

Alternative title: MANULAB: Norsk forskningsinfrastruktur for forskning på vareproduksjon

Awarded: NOK 78.0 mill.

MANULAB is a national research infrastructure for manufacturing research, and the goal is to create an infrastructure capable of performing cutting edge research with state-of-the art equipment, and to support the Norwegian manufacturing industry to increase its global competitiveness and sustainable value adding. MANULAB enables basic research complementary to other existing and planned infrastructure and centres such as catapult centres. The laboratories has advanced scientific equipment and facilities, ant it continue to invest in equipment for additive manufacturing (a.k.a. 3D-printing), joining technologies, material characterization, metal forming, robotics, manufacturing of light weight parts. MANULAB will invest in industry 4.0 including learning factories for social science research on the next generation operators and engineers. The laboratories will be open for use by all researches in Norway based on booking in the MANULAB booking system and payment according to the rental place model. The laboratories are located in Trondheim, Ålesund and Gjøvik/Raufoss.

MANULAB is a national research infrastructure for manufacturing research and the goal is to create an infrastructure capable of performing cutting edge research with state-of-the art equipment, and to support the Norwegian manufacturing industry to increase its global competitiveness and sustainable value adding. MANULAB enables basic research complementary to other existing and planned infrastructure and centres such as catapult centres. The laboratories will be advanced scientific equipment and facilities, a scientific database and e-infrastructure. Sensors and cameras are connect all physical equipment at the four geographical locations in a industry 4.0 / Cyber-physical Manufacturing System (CPMS) to form one united virtual laboratory. Digital twin, Internet of Things, remote supervision and control will make physical presence less important. Research data and metadata will be collected and stored in a database. MANULAB will invest in equipment for additive manufacturing (a.k.a. 3D-printing), joining technologies, robotics, manufacturing of light weight parts, industry 4.0/CPMS including learning factories for social science research on the next generation operators and engineers. Effective laser welding of thick section steel, one-piece-flow adaptive and flexible automation, next generation aluminium pars manufacturing, high-quality additive manufacturing for mass customisation are some of the research challenges the infrastructure will contribute to solve. MANULAB have a physical level with hardware, machines, sensors etc., a virtual level as a digital twin of the physical level, numerical modelling, simulation and optimisation, and a finally a human or socio-technical level. It will be a full-scale test centre for CPMS, with the use of wireless sensor networks, RFID tracking etc. This way will the infrastructure facilitate research at basic technology and process level as well as manufacturing systems and organisational level.

Publications from Cristin

Funding scheme:

FORINFRA-Nasj.sats. forskn.infrastrukt

Funding Sources