Huddersfield is UK contribution to new EU GPS training material
Thu, 08 Oct 2015 15:10:00 BST
The University’s EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Advanced Metrology has played a role in drawing up the GPS standards
GEOMETRICAL Product Specifications have become a vital international language for modern manufacturers. Now, the University of Huddersfield has teamed up with leading institutions throughout Europe in order to devise a new, urgently-needed system of GPS training.
The three-year, EU-funded project will create a “virtual toolbox”, consisting of training material – much of it electronically delivered – that will enable people who are working in manufacturing and engineering to gain expertise in GPS.
In addition to the distance-learning component, participating universities including Huddersfield – the sole UK member of the consortium – will provide on-campus sessions that will deliver practical guidance. The course as a whole will take six months to complete.
Dr Paul Bills (pictured right), who is based in the University of Huddersfield’s EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Advanced Metrology, is in charge of the UK contribution to the GPS training project, which gets underway with a conference in October 2015. Pilot courses should start to run in late 2017. The scheme has received 450,000 euros via the EU’s Erasmus programme. Nine institutions are taking part, including universities in Poland, France, Switzerland, Romania and Italy.
GPS standards have been described as an international language of symbols for expressing tolerances in technical drawing. They mean that a drawing of a component can be despatched anywhere in the world and the component accurately manufactured, even if GPS is the only language shared by the designer and the producer.
“Traditionally there were quite a lot of different standards relating to different industries, with things specified in subtly different ways,” said Dr Bills. “GPS is a way of unifying most of that, so it can be universally applied.”
Professors Liam Blunt and Xiangqian Jiang, of the University’s EPSRC Centre have played a role in drawing up the GPS standards and are among the authors of the standard book on the subject.
Dr Bills – who will have the assistance of researcher Dr Tukun Li – said that knowledge of GPS is increasingly important for people working in modern manufacturing and engineering, but the subject is inadequately taught and information can be difficult to access. The new EU project will seek to rectify this and the result will be improved manufacturing efficiency.
