Prototwinning

In all engineering disciplines a combination of digital and physical models is necessary to support the progression of the design process, with each model and iteration thereof generating new understanding and knowledge to inform decision-making.
A huge amount of work goes into managing these models, transferring between the physical and digital worlds, updating designs, and trying to align the information that each model and prototype provides.
But imagine instead that all models were intelligently linked across the digital and physical worlds. Where design changes in any model automatically update the others. Where test results are automatically shared and integrated wherever they are most useful. Where the physical world and digital world in engineering grow together and take the best of both, with no need for systems or work to bridge the gap between.
Prototwinning is a 5-year program in which we are seeking to develop the next generation of fully integrated digital / physical models and systems, facilitating seamless transition between them.
Prototwinning Projects
Recent Prototwinning Posts
BAM @ AMSTA 2022
The Brokering Additive Manufacturing research group present at the 16th International KES Conference on Agent & Multi-Agent Systems.
DMF Industry Showcase for The Product Partnership
The DMF lab welcomed The Product Partnership and representatives from the four founding companies: Amalgam (https://www.amalgam-models.co.uk/); Cubik Innovation (https://www.cubik-innovation.co.uk/); Realise Design (https://www.realisedesign.co.uk/) and Newicon (https://newicon.net/) to an evening technology showcase and demo. The evening included state-of-the-art tech demonstrations followed by the obligatory beer and burgers. The research/tech demos included: Exploring the neurocognitive differences between digital […]
The International Design Engineering Annual (IDEA) Challenge 2022
The second iteration of the IDEA challenge took place in April 2022 featuring teams from Blekinge Technical University (Sweden), Aalto University (Finland), NTNU (Norway) the University of Zagreb (Croatia) and the University of Bristol (UK). It was co-hosted by us at the DMF lab and Daniel Ege – a reigning IDEA champion from 2021’s NTNU […]
Improving mixed-reality prototyping through a classification and characterisation of fidelity
Improving mixed-reality prototyping through a classification and characterisation of fidelity – Design Conference 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln04nqX1IL8 Prototyping is a vital activity in product development. For reasons of time, cost and level of definition, low fidelity representations of products are used to advance understanding and progress design. With the advent of Mixed Reality prototyping, the ways in […]
BAM @ TCT 3SXTY
The Brokering Additive Manufacturing (BAM) team visit and present at TCT 3SXTY in Birmingham.
Virtually-hosted hackathons for design research
This video was originally presented at the Design Conference 2022 and provides an overview and appraisal of the International Design Engineering Annual (IDEA) challenge – a virtually hosted design hackathon run with the aim of generating a design research dataset that can provide insights into design activities at virtually hosted hackathons. The resulting dataset consists […]
The DMF go to Design 2022!
This week the whole DMF gave a strong showing at one of our very favourite conference series – DESIGN 2022 – hosted by our friends at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. For the second (and hopefully final) time the conference was hosted virtually, but as always it was a great chance to present our work […]
Characterising UK Additive Manufacturing survey is now live!
The Brokering Addtive Manufacturing team are looking for AM industry members to contribute in their characterisation of UK AM.
BAM attend advanced engineering conference, MACH 2022
n April, BAM project members Jennifer Johns and Kautsar Ramli attended MACH Conference 2022 at the NEC in Birmingham.