Manufacturing & Design
The Manufacturing & Design Group, M&D, is a major technical area within the Mechanical Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin. This group utilizes modern analytical tools to design structures and systems associated with power plants, manufacturing machines, transport vehicles, robots, space stations, recycling, hazardous-waste management, military hardware, prosthetic devices, and even toys for children. Today's manufacturing processes utilize precision machine systems. The supporting technologies for these systems include machine tools, robotics, metrology, microelectronic systems, and human augmentation systems. Research in manufacturing processes also addresses several specific processes, including free-form fabrication with laser sintering, a process invented in this Department that enables computer-guided production of any three-dimensional object directly from a design database.