Composite drilling and robotic machining were some of the research topics presented by staff from the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) at a conference on advanced high performance cutting.

The event was held at a concert hall in Budapest, Hungary, and organised by the CIRP, an international organisation for academic and industrial manufacturing research. It involved three days of presentations and discussions - with some 150 papers presented by scientists, researchers and industrial partners from across the globe, describing the latest research in the field of machining.

Attendees representing the AMRC were Chris Taylor from the Machining Group and Kevin Kerrigan from the Composites Machining Group. They were joined by Lisa Alhadeff and Jack Palmer from the Industrial Doctorate Centre, and PhD students Huseyin Celikag and Luis Urena, who are supervised by the AMRC Machining Group’s Erdem Ozturk.

The topics they presented included drilling of composites, cutting fluid delivery in turning of titanium alloys, grinding and wire electrode discharge machining, and robotic machining. Four additional AMRC staff and four staff from the wider University of Sheffield collaborated on the work presented, either as co-authors or project supervisors.

Chris Taylor, who presented research on cutting fluid application for titanium alloys, said: “Other than events held on the AMRC site, this was the best-targeted conference I have attended. There was great learning to be had about machining and cutting tools. The work I presented created interest and relevant questions from the audience, which I can go away and think about to generate our next round of research.”

Also in attendance at the event was Neil Sims, Head of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Ahmad Yusoff, a former PhD student at the University of Sheffield who is now an assistant professor in Malaysia.

Papers presented at the event will be featured in the journal Procedia CIRP, which will be published online later in 2018.