RAS Nodes

The award-winning Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC) forms part of Cardiff University, which dates back to 1883 and is one of Britain's major civic universities. The 80-strong ISO 9001:2000 accredited Centre has an international reputation for its leading-edge research in advanced manufacturing and information technology spanning a broad spectrum of subjects.

The Chair of Manufacturing Technology (head: Prof. Manfred Geiger; about 80 employees) is one of the six departments of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. The chair's key activities comprise metal forming, laser technology and development of computational tools in the area of these technologies. The research topics in the field of micro manufacturing cover micro metal forming processes like bulk metal forming, blanking or deep drawing, micro laser manufacturing processes applied to welding, soldering or adjustment of micro components as well as metrology of micro structures.In order to spread the results of research and to qualify engineers students of the university are trained by lectures, practical training and writing of diploma and doctoral theses.

The Institute for Microsystem Technology (IMTEK), founded in 1995, is one of the largest academic institutions in this field. As it was created completely from scratch as part of the new-founded Faculty of Applied Sciences we share a new campus with modern teaching and training facilities together with the Institute of Computer Science. The foundation of a new technical faculty provided the chance not only to use new facilities but also to create a novel engineering course which differs significantly from traditional engineering disciplines. So the basis for the specification of the course has been the questions for the indispensable skills of a ‘universal’ engineer of the 21st century. The curriculum was inaugurated in October 1996 when the first classes started in the course microsystem technology. The first graduations have been in spring 2001. Between 1998 and 2001 about 90 freshmen started studying Microsystem Technology every year. The curriculum has been modified several times since 1996 in order to comply more and more with our initial goals.

TNO Industrial Technology increases the competitive strength of companies by providing them support in the development of products, materials and production processes. In order to solve our customers' problems and help them fulfil their ambitions, we combine our competences with the customers' own expertise and, if necessary, we involve other TNO institutes and third parties.