Project duration: 01 January 2019 – 31 December 2020
Objective:
Additive manufacturing (AM) is revolutionizing the way in which raw materials can be saved, reused and optimized. LILIAM deals with the set up of a training program in AM dedicated to operators, specialists, engineers, manager and new professionals to fill the current lack of specialists able to take advantage of AM over the whole value chain (from material to end of life). The programme will be designed to release an official European certificate.
The solution (technology):
Additive manufacturing techniques, like 3D-printing or other techniques able to manufacture products with complex shapes thanks to a “layer by layer” construction, are innovative technologies that open new perspectives for the design of products. They are applied to different types of materials (polymers, metals and ceramics) and may be used in almost all sectors of the industry. Those techniques are able to reduce the amount of raw material used to manufacture a product, and that at least 2 ways: first, the material is placed only where it is needed for functional purposes, and second, there is no removal of material, as is the case with the traditional techniques using machining, drilling and cutting.
However, those techniques are not sufficiently known by engineers and technicians, and need specialized people to be used at their best: their success is linked to several factors, like the optimization of the design of the parts (topological optimization), but also the perfect control of the parameters of the processes: in those techniques, the material is built together with the product, and the mechanical characteristics of the material are strongly linked to the process parameters.
The present project aims to give a European frame to dedicated training programmes in order to specialize different categories of workers (operators, designers, and engineers) towards the control of additive manufacturing techniques.
Partners:
Politecnico di Milano, Italy (Lead Partner)
Aitiip Technology Centre, Spain
Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission), France
FOTEC Forschungs- und Technologietransfer GmbH, Austria
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (Fraunhofer), Germany
SIRRIS LE CENTRE COLLECTIF DE L’INDUSTRIE TECHNOLOGIQUE, Belgium
Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Finland
TNO – AMSYSTEMS Centre, Netherlands
Trentino Sviluppo, Italy
For more information, please visit the project website.