The Expedition to Net Zero: Sustainability Research Powered by Autodesk Fusion 360

MARK CHESTER: Hello, Autodesk University, and welcome aboard this session, or should I say this expedition on our Expedition to Net Zero-- Sustainability Research using-- Powered by Autodesk Fusion 360. On our expedition today, or leading our expedition today, will be me, Mark Chester. I'm currently delivering the session from Manchester Metropolitan University, PrintCity [INAUDIBLE] in United Kingdom, but will be with you on the day in New Orleans.

PrintCity is based in the UK, and my current role at PrintCity is product development specialist on our 3.2 million funded pound project, which is our PrintCity Network Research project, which I will talk to you a little bit about in a second. I've worked at Manchester Metropolitan University for about three years now. I'm helping companies in the area to adopt different digital manufacturing technologies, but also to adopt more civically additive manufacturing technologies into their companies.

Fusion 360 is my go-to CAD software. I've used it for about seven years plus now, and mostly here, in my duration at Manchester Metropolitan University. Previously to that, I was actually Autodesk certified instructor as well in Fusion 360.

So I'd go around and teach Fusion 360 to academic institutes and companies as well. And it's been really great to see how the software has developed over time. It's really interesting to see how the software will also develop in the future there as well.

So enough about me. We're going to then start to set the scene of our expedition. So where are we going to sit across from? So we're going to welcome you to Manchester Metropolitan University, which is one of the greenest universities in the United Kingdom, which was as an academic institute, I'm very proud to be able to say.

So let me tell you a little bit more about Manchester Metropolitan University. So as you may have guessed, we are based in the Greater Manchester region of United Kingdom, or of England. If you've never been to England, we're just in sort of the northwest there.

We have quite a long history of innovation in Manchester, which is really nice to put our foundations on. In total, the university has over 4,000 members of staff, and that 4,000 members of staff include about 800 academics. And then with all the members of staff, we also have 37,000 students across about 1,000 different courses for undergrad and postgraduate there. So quite a large scale facility, and in fact, campus, I'd say.

Actually, our vice chancellor professor Malcolm Press recently said that, actually, managing the whole university was very similar to running a small town. That's kind of the scale at which we're looking at, at our university. And obviously, with that scale comes the complexity of managing all the people, but also managing the sustainability of what we do here at the university, but also what our students go on to do as well.

Recently, in 2021, we had our Research Excellent Framework, or REF, which is basically a kind of something that all universities go through to basically see what kind of impacts and basically analyzes the quality of the research that we're doing at our university. So in our most recent REF, we ranked fifth in terms of research impacts, which really shows the kind of impact that our research has across the world, I suppose, and the kind of companies that we work with as well.

We are also then, in 2021 we also ranked top of the People and Planet Green League ahead of every other UK University, which is fantastic. It's a really big accolade that we are really happy to have, especially as sustainable practices are really integrated in what we do here at Manchester Metropolitan University.

That league table has really consisted of recognizing the commitment to carbon emissions that we do, but also was working towards a zero carbon future there as well. It's really important that, as a university, we're putting sustainability at the heart of everything that we do, both in our teaching, but also in the practices and services that we offer here at the university.

So as I said, as a university, we're very passionate about trying to be as sustainable as we can be, and that's not just in our day to day life. Also, trying to futureproof that for future generations of students to come. And part of what we do here at the university is we have different strategies, which we share to our students and also to academic staff and our staff as a whole. And it's really important as well that our staff and students have the opportunity to feed into then strategies as well.

So our current strategy is our Road to 2030 strategy, which we are currently working on, and the aim of that is to reduce our emissions to net zero before 2038. And that is, by no means, a small target, believe me, especially in terms of the complexity of our organization. But what we have is we have these strategies to break them down into smaller goals that are more achievable.

So things that we do, for instance, an example being that the facility vehicles that we have at the university are all now electric. We have lots of different research projects as well, looking at things like hydrogen fuel cells, et cetera, to try and make our facility as sustainable as possible.

Additionally, it's really important that the students that are going through our university are educated but also equipped with the knowledge to hopefully shape a more sustainable future because they are going to be the next people in industry that are adding in these sustainable processes that we're teaching, and hopefully, having a greater impact producing a more sustainable future.

So our vessel today for our expedition will be our PrintCity facility, which I work at. So PrintCity is part of Manchester Metropolitan University, and it was established in 2018. We have grown from about five 3D printers and one member of staff to about 60 3D printers and about 23 members of staff in about four years. So quite a lot of growth.

As I say, we have about 60 plus 3D printers spanning across four different technologies. I'm not going to go through them all today because we will not have enough time, but we have quite a lot of different capabilities within our facility. At the core of PrintCity, we have these four main pillars that everything revolves around, and it pretty much makes up everything we do.

So the four main pillars that we have are-- our first one is education. So on that education, we obviously provide 3D printing services for all staff members, academic staff and students, going through the university. So if they want an object 3D printed, they can come to us, and we can put it onto machines to print. But also, we can then teach students how to use a 3D printers, induct them onto the 3D printers, and they can use the 3D printers themselves.

As well as on the education side of things, we also have an MFC in digital design and manufacturing, which uses Fusion 360. And that is really great because students from different undergraduates can come onto the course and learn about digital manufacturing technologies that we have here at our facilities and start to embed it into practices that they learned in their undergraduate degree.

Next up, we then have our outreach programs as well. So we work with primary schools, secondary schools, and local communities to teach them about 3D modeling and 3D printing. And obviously, a part of that is teaching Fusion 360, so we have workshops here on a regular basis to be able to teach people how to use Fusion 360 because without any 3D models, we have no 3D prints.

And a big part of that is trying to show people from deprived backgrounds basically that universities are somewhere that are achievable for people like them, but also that universities are not a big scary place. They're made up of different facilities like ours, which have lots of different diversity, but also are very approachable and down to Earth.

We also have our knowledge exchange, which is basically our commercial services. So we offer the equipment and the expertise in our facility to national and international companies to use. So for instance, if somebody wants a feasibility study doing one of our 3D printers, they can go through our knowledge exchange services.

And then a last step, we have our research projects, and as I said before, we started from, in 2018, with one member of staff, and now grown to 23 members of staff as of 2022. The majority of that growth is coming through the different research projects that we have here at PrintCity. So we have six major research projects that focus on [INAUDIBLE] manufacturing, sustainability, and [INAUDIBLE] economy, which I'm going to talk to you in a little bit more detail in the following slides.

One thing that we try to do, and as I said before about sustainability, have been the key-- have been at the focal point. Everything we do in the university, we also try and make our facility as sustainable as possible.

So an example of this is being our filament recycling point, which you can see in the bottom of the screen there, in which students and our technical staff can recycle failed prints or filaments, and then we can reprocess the failed prints into filament again for 3D printing. So just one example of one of the ways in which we're making our sustainable-- or trying to make our facility as sustainable as possible.

So the main power behind our expedition and driving our expedition is these research projects that I've spoken about, and the three research projects that I'm going to talk to you today about are the ones you can see on screen. So first look, we have our Transform CE project, which is focusing on recycling, using single waste plastics to produce new products and processes.

We then have our ShaRepair project, which looks to repair electrical and domestic appliances using additive manufacturing or other digital manufacturing technologies. And then lastly, we have our CIRMAP project, which is looking at how we can create recycled fine aggregate, and we can create recycled concrete mixtures to create customizable furniture for public places.

And you can use the QR codes on the bottom of your screen to learn more about these different projects. If you just go on your phone, and go on the camera, you should be able to scan the QR code, and it will take you to the relevant website there.

The other research projects that we have at PrintCity aren't necessarily as focused on Fusion 360 and sustainability, so I'm not going to go into as great of depth. But they're definitely worth mentioning. So the other research projects that we have include Bioplastics Europe, which is helping to develop and implement sustainability based solutions for biobased plastic production.

We then also have our ECO-I program, which is helping companies in the northwest of England to create new carbon and low carbon products, processes, and services. But also then looking at existing processes, products, and services and trying to reduce the carbon emissions from them as well.

And then finally, we have the PrintCity network program, or my favorite program, which is the one I work on, which is basically a program that helps companies in the Greater Manchester area to adopt digital manufacturing technologies with a focus on additive manufacturing to create new products, processes, and services, which is also powered by Fusion 360 again. Again, if you would like to find any more information about any of these projects, please feel free to scan the QR codes on the bottom of the screen there, and it will take you to the relevant website.

Now, it's definitely worth mentioning that our PrintCity facility is definitely integrated with Fusion. So Fusion 360 is at the heart of everything we do at the facility. The couple of reasons why we adopted Fusion 360 back in 2018 is, one, it's so accessible for the students and the companies that are coming into our space, so we will have artists. We will have fashion, textile students, you name it, coming into our facility.

And sometimes, that's really quite a complex thing to manage because, sometimes, we have users that have had no previous CAD experience trying to adopt additive manufacturing technologies. Fusion 360 is really great because we can, really quickly, in a couple of hours, take a non CAD user and be able to create a 3D model really quickly, which means then they can actually 3D print something, which it would be very difficult to do using another software package.

We also find that the software package is so versatile as well. So as I mentioned before, we have so many different disciplines going into PrintCity, which means the projects on a week to week basis could be pretty much anything.

We also have a variety of different research projects coming into PrintCity as well, not just the research projects that we have in PrintCity, but the ones that also come into PrintCity, that we need to have a software that is versatile enough to be able to manage all the different requests that we have coming in. So we find that Fusion 360 and its capabilities can pretty much do everything that we require, and I'll show you some of the examples of this on the next set of slides.

So on our PrintCity expedition, we came across several challenges that our research projects were looking to change, and to basically try and do something about. So the first set of challenges we faced was, of the 62 million tons of plastic produced in Europe each year, only 30% is collected for recycling. And in total, this means that over 43 million tons of plastic is not being collected for recycling.

So our Transform CE project is a 6.93 million euro research project funded by Interreg North West Europe, which is funded by European Regional Development funding. The project focuses on transforming single use plastic waste, which is typically not recycled, and turning it into value added products using two manufacturing methods. So we have Additive Manufacturing, or AM, and then we also have intrusion extrusion molding there as well.

The output of that project is to basically divert 308 tons of plastic waste from landfill or incineration, which is quite a big target. But then also, the other output of that project is to try and get 20 companies in Europe to adopt this recycled plastic that we have diverted, so trying to either get them to adopt the recycled plastic to design new products or to manufacture existing products.

Another output of the project as well is that we have lots of free filament, so obviously, we've got a lot of plastic there we're trying to divert from landfill. We've diverted quite a lot of it and turn it into free filament for 3D printing.

So if you would like some free filament, please feel free to scan the QR code in the top right hand corner, and that will take you to a form to get some filament. You can either get PET, PLA, or ABS in either 1.75 or 2.85. Please feel free to fill out the form and get some free filament there.

So how we're using Fusion 360 with this research project? So in this case, we're using Fusion to develop better products, and we're using Fusion in one particular area, in this instance. So Fusion recently brought in a new plastics workspace into Fusion 360, which has been really useful for this particular kind of project.

So in the first instance, we can design products, and we can design products more easily with features that are ready for injection molding using tools like snap fits. We can then also optimize the products that then we are designing as well, using different strategies, so we can use things like shape topology or generative design or generative modeling. Or we can use volumetric glasses as well, if we're using 3D printing, to try and optimize parts and reduce the amount of material used in some of the parts that we are creating.

We can then also analyze the paths that we are creating, ready for the injection molding process, and this is really useful for both students that are coming into our facility and have not touched injection molding or have no previous experience with injection molding, or for companies that have not used the injection molding manufacturing process either. It's really a very handy tool to help explain why we need to design for all the different processes that we have available.

And then finally, we can also simulate for the molding process as well. So we can help to identify different faults, and we can also find recommendations of how to improve our products as well. And in turn, we're hoping that this will help us to create better products, will also help reduce the amount of waste when producing these products as well.

So next up on our expedition, we also have our ShaRepair project, and again, we came up with another-- we found another challenge. So each year in Europe, we're seeing that the generation of waste electrical equipment is growing between 3% and 5%. An example of this is this weekend. I just recently-- my window vac broke, and I needed to buy a new one for cleaning my windows and my shower and whatnot. And this is definitely a problem that is growing and needs addressing.

So one fine thing that we're starting to see more of is the Right to Repair movement, so end consumers actually repairing the consumer products that they buy. What ShaRepair is looking to do is trying to basically help the Right to Repair communities that are starting to pop up. So we're seeing facilities like repair cafes popping up so that people can go to these places and repair their products.

The aim of ShaRepair is to basically help these communities to adopt new innovative technologies, such as 3D scanning or 3D printing, to produce spare parts and components. Again, the project is funded by an Interreg North West, a part of the European regional development funding, and the outputs for the projects are to try and reduce 175 tons of waste electrical and electronic equipment.

And we have various case studies that we have used this on to try and repair some domestic appliances that we've found. We then also have other outputs, also include the creation of files that people can download online and 3D print, but also workshops that people can learn 3D modeling and also learn how to 3D print and repair parts as well.

So again, we're using Fusion 360 to basically support this research project again. And when we're talking about trying to create replacement parts for domestic appliances, obviously, we need a 3D model. And to do this, we normally start with a 3D scan because it's really difficult to try and find these different 3D models on the internet or from the manufacturer themselves.

So what Fusion 360's really great for is we have a mesh workspace within Fusion 360 where we can start to import meshes into. So in the mesh workspace, we can import and modify different meshes depending on the 3D scans that we brought in, and then with the different modified meshes that we bring in, we can then start to reverse engineer parts. And we can do these using a couple of different strategies.

So we can either use the mesh slicing methods where we can create different cross-sections through the meshes and start to loft or extrude. We can then also use conversion strategies as well, which have become a lot better in Fusion 360 more recently. Or finally, we can use the free form modeling workflows as well to create more organic shapes.

And the end goal for this is to create a suitable BREP, so boundary representation, solid bodies that we can then prepare for additive manufacturing because some of the parts that we have aren't necessarily suitable for the end additive manufacturing process that we're using. Once we have a 3D model that is ready, we can then go straight to manufacture.

So we can go into the manufacturing workspace, and we can choose the right manufacturing workflow for 3D printing the different objects. Fusion's really great at this point for having different 3D printers available, so we have a bank of [INAUDIBLE] here, and a bank of [INAUDIBLE] makers that we can 3D print parts from. And in some cases as well, we can use our own recycled filament to be able to actually create the parts that we're looking to replace.

So the last project up on our expedition today is our CIRMAP project, and I'm going to start this one with asking a question. Are we running out of sand? And this might seem like kind of an odd question. If you go to the beach, there's plenty of sand around.

But each year, we're using around 50 billion tons of sand for constructing buildings and creating new products. Sand is the second most used resource after water, and this is a resource that is completely unregulated as well. So what happens when we run out of sand?

So CIRMAP map is a research project, which is basically investigating how we can use construction demolition waste and convert it into recycled finite goods, which we can then use within 3D printing concrete mortar mixes as a substitute for virgin and sharp sand. So how can we take a building, demolish it, and reprocess that as recycled fine aggregates put through a concrete 3D printer and save the sand?

Again, the project is a 6.98 million euro funded research project backed by Interreg North West, again, part of our European Regional Development funding as many of our different projects are. And this program is run across multiple different parts across Europe, so you can see on screen that some of the different countries that we're working with.

Our part of the program is essentially to create suitable RFA, or Recycled Fine Aggregate, concrete mixers or recipes, which we will then use to create street furniture with, which will then go into local authorities or spaces. We also then bring this project to our students as well, so students will be able to design different pieces of street furniture to put on these different spaces and use concrete 3D printing to create their different masterpieces.

Again, we're using Fusion 360, but this time, we're using Fusion 360 for concrete 3D printing. Again, Fusion 360 comes to the rescue, as it has multiple times before. So in the software, we can really easily start to create and design these really organic shapes, which can be really difficult to construct using other methods of manufacturing.

And as I spoke about previously, when we have students coming into our facility that have no previous experience with CADs, or Computer Aided Design, but they have a good-- they have a design or have an idea or inspiration, Fusion 360 is definitely a great tool to be able to use with them to really quickly create something like this.

One thing that we typically find with concrete 3D printing, as you can see on this previous slide here, is that the layer lines can be very noticeable, and the surface finish isn't necessarily fantastic. So one thing we can do to try and either embellish or disguise the surface finish or concrete 3D prints is to use the pattern tools in Fusion 360.

And especially now, we have a geometric potential in Fusion 360, we can create different surface textures on the parts that we're looking to create to then disguise this surface, or trying to improve the quality of the prints that we're making.

So with the street furniture that we're looking to put out to local communities and local authorities, we obviously need to make sure that key stakeholders that are looking to put these designs into their spaces are happy with them. So a really big part of this is trying to make sure that we create realistic visualizations of the different pieces of furniture that we put into these different spaces, and this is where the Fusion 360 render workspace comes in.

So really quickly, we can create a really photorealistic visualization of the furniture that we're looking to put into the space, and we can work with the key stakeholders to try and get them to envision how this will look in their workspace. Obviously, if we can get the design right at this stage, then we don't have to print again or make changes to the prints, and then obviously, that means more waste.

We can also take this one step further as well. So we don't just have to necessarily do renders, but what we can also then start to do is we can then export USDZ files, which we can then put onto a smartphone like an iPhone or an iPad. And then we can view these designs in augmented reality within their future homes, so key stakeholders can understand how these pieces of furniture will look like in their spaces, which will then result in, hopefully, a more happy stakeholder.

Finally, in the future, what we'd like to do is be able to use Fusion 360 to manufacture the different pieces of furniture that we're creating within the software. So at the moment, the Fusion 360 workspace supports multiaxis machining, which is great for direct energy deposition processes, like wire-art additive manufacturing.

However, not necessarily supporting concrete 3D printing. What we'd love to see in the future is how we can use Fusion 360 to actually manufacture the parts that we're creating and actually go straight from design to manufacture in Fusion 360 using concrete 3D printing.

So if you have any questions about any of the different things that I've spoken about today, including our PrintCity facility, Manchester Metropolitan University, our MSC course in digital design and manufacturing, please feel free to head to our website, which you can see at the top of the screen there. If you'd like to reach out to us as well, there are contact details on there, and we will respond to you.

If you would like to learn about any of our research projects, again, please feel free to scan the QR codes that you can see on the screen. Again, just use your camera on your smartphone, and then you can scan these different QR codes and go to the relevant website. But please, feel free to reach out to us.

And for us, this is definitely just the start of our expedition to net zero. We're basically just starting, but we definitely have future plans with different research projects, [INAUDIBLE] different improvements to our facility, to try and make our practice more sustainable and get to net zero. And of course, we'll continue to use Fusion 360 to power other research projects in the future and continue to power our existing research projects as well.

And I really hope this session has inspired you to look at your own organization, and hopefully, inspired you to start your own expeditions to net zero. Please feel free to get in touch if you'd like any advice, or if you'd like to learn more about how we're trying to make our organization more sustainable or how we can help make your organization more sustainable, too.

Many thanks for listening to my session today. Please feel free to get in touch using the channels that I just shared with you. If you require any information, you'd be able to find it there, too, and have a great Autodesk University.