Objetivo
SCULPTOR project aims at innovating radically the European sheet metal sector, by providing this industry with an optimized, flexible, safe and environmental-friendly forming technology. The new technology will replace in the mid term traditional processes for short and medium sized batches which mean a potential European market of 3.000 Millions of Euros. In the long term, it will pave the way for fundamental changes of manufacture, enabling the production of customized or advanced design products, whose m anufacturing for current technologies is cost and quality ineffective, even unapproachable. The new technology will make a great impact on the European metal forming industry, comparable to the impact the development of numerical control made on metal cutt ing manufacturing forty years ago. Nowadays many industrial sectors, as automotive or aeronautic industry, use forming processes as stamping process or deep drawing, based on big and costly dies and presses. The main advantages are short time of production and high productivity. But they require big initial investment and specific dies for each part, which makes the process inflexible and unattainable for SMEs. These facts make these processes only profitable for long batches and economically unfeasible for short or medium series, as manufacturing of spare parts, furniture, coaches, trains or special vehicles. This market reaches a business volume higher than 4.000 Millions of Euro per year. The current solutions for this market involve either manufacturing in a different material or changing the design of the product or manual work. SCULPTOR project aims at covering this market through an innovative concept of sheet metal forming where only will be produced what is demanded. This goal will be achieved throu gh the development of a flexible and self-controlled technology based on a local plastic deformation through two smart tools whose trajectories are numerically controlled.
Ámbito científico
Tema(s)
Convocatoria de propuestas
FP6-2003-NMP-TI-3-MAIN
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