Matman provides an easy-to-use REST API featuring the mechanical and physical properties of various engineering materials as well as the capabilities of several manufacturing processes. The API delivers curated data in the universally usable JSON format, which is compatible with any programming language and reusable in any application.

The current data exposed in Matman has been collated from the textbook entitled “Manufacturing Engineering and Technology” (by Kalpakjian & Schmid), which is highly regarded as one of the top go-to reference textbooks for design and manufacturing engineers.

The motivation to build this API came forth as a result of not being able to find a similar single source of structured information, in electronic format, across the entire World Wide Web. Therefore, Matman provides a simplified, straightforward and time-efficient way for application developers working on engineering applications to consume the relevant materials and manufacturing processes data.

Furthermore, Matman not only addresses the need for rapid access to common agreed knowledge on materials and manufacturing processes in an API-driven economy, but it is also intended to play a part in the wider scope of Industry 4.0 to support data exchange and reuse.

Semantic Considerations

Values for a property or capability are typically provided as a range consisting of an upper-bound and a lower-bound limit. Where the values supplied for the upper-bound and lower-bound limits of a property or capability are the same, this implies that this is a single value property or capability. For example, the upper-bound and lower-bound values for the density of “Aluminium” are the same, meaning the density of Aluminium is fixed, whereas the density of “Aluminium alloys” is not fixed and falls within a range of possible values because alloys can be of different composition and are not the pure metal.