PhD Studentship - Large-scale On-site Manufacturing with Closed-loop 3D Printing and Autonomous Reconstruction

Application deadline: All year round

Research theme: Robotics, Smart Manufacturing

How to apply: uom.link/pgr-apply-2425

No. of positions: 1

This 3.5 year PhD is funded by the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and is available to UK students. The successful student will receive an annual tax free stipend set at the UKRI amount (£20,780 for 2025/26) and tuition fees will be paid. We expect the stipend to increase each year.

The start date is between October and December 2025.

Large-scale product manufacturing spans key sectors such as the aerospace industry, renewable energy systems, and infrastructure development, contributing approximately £100 billion to the UK’s GDP. While emerging 3D printing (3DP) technologies offer promising opportunities for product individualization and decentralized manufacturing, current systems are constrained by the requirement that the printer’s workspace must be larger than the product itself. As a result, large end-products are typically produced off-site in parts and later assembled on-site.

This project aims to advance 3DP technology by incorporating mobility and autonomy, thereby scaling up the effective workspace to match arbitrary product sizes and enabling direct on-site manufacturing. The successful candidate will explore innovative methods to realize large-scale on-site 3DP by addressing two key technical challenges: 1) How to achieve efficient and proactive reconstruction of the printing process, enabling real-time in-situ monitoring of large-volume material deposition and 2) How to adaptively compensate for size-induced defect magnification and error accumulation by closing the feedback loop of conventional 3DP systems. The candidate will test the developed technologies across multiple application scenarios, including large-scale on-site fabrication, product repair and maintenance tasks, etc.

Applicants should have or expect to achieve at least a UK 2.1 honours degree in Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Computer Science or related disciplines. Experience in autonomous system, manufacturing/robotics and machine vision development will be an advantage.

To apply please contact the supervisor, Dr Kun Qian - kun.qian@manchester.ac.uk. Please include details of your current level of study, academic background and any relevant experience and include a paragraph about your motivation to study this PhD project.

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