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Multi Material Additive Manufacturing with Electrostatic Cold Spray

Project description

Additive manufacturing for a sustainable future

Additive manufacturing (AM) holds great promise for the future of industrial production, but it is not without challenges. Many popular AM methods, like laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), use much more energy than traditional manufacturing techniques. These methods also struggle with limitations in speed, size, material choice, and surface quality. As a result, AM has not yet reached its full potential in many industries. In this context, the EIC-funded MadeCold project will combine new techniques in solid-state physics, material science, and control systems. MadeCold aims to develop a unique process to efficiently bond metal powders. This promises to improve the speed, flexibility, and scalability of AM, opening up new possibilities for industries such as aerospace, energy, and hybrid manufacturing.

Objective

While additive manufacturing (AM) is deemed the future of industrial production for its exceptional freedom in design, several technical limits hinder its full exploitation. Surprisingly, the most diffused AM techniques (e.g. LPBF) are associated with almost 4 times higher energy consumption compared to conventional manufacturing processes, while being also more limited in build rate, build size, material selection and surface quality. We need to re-invent AM to tackle these challenges and expand its market to uncharted areas. In MadeCold we will achieve a real breakthrough in this direction by merging solid state and electrostatic physics, control and monitoring, and mechanical design with material science to develop a disruptive solid state deposition process. The revolutionary principle of MadeCold is to charge and accelerate metal powders to supersonic velocities in a customized electric field and take benefit from the kinetic energy to induce bonding upon impact with a substrate; this has not been done before. Relying on our preliminary results, we will implement multiscale computational models and advanced experiments to develop a single launcher to prove bonding efficiency. Then via a new control system, we will pair multiple launchers to exhibit the capacity of MadeCold for covering simultaneously a theoretically unlimited surface, compared to the point-wise print of the current AM. We will demonstrate that it outperforms the existing technologies regarding the accuracy, deposition rate, flexibility and scalability and paves the way to depositing functional multi-material structures with unprecedented properties. We intend to prove this in 3 key sectors: aerospace, energy and hybrid manufacturing with specific proofs of concept. We are confident to achieve the overall objectives via a sophisticated multi-disciplinary approach based on scientific investigations, and the exploitation of discoveries to establish Europe as a leader in advanced manufacturing.

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC Grants

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2023-PATHFINDEROPEN-01

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Coordinator

POLITECNICO DI MILANO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 961 250,00
Address
PIAZZA LEONARDO DA VINCI 32
20133 Milano
Italy

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Region
Nord-Ovest Lombardia Milano
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 961 250,00

Participants (4)

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