Project description
Additive manufacturing technology for fast complex parts production
Aluminium is valued for its high strength, lightweight properties and conductivity, making it a popular choice for industrial parts. While mechanical manufacturing techniques like die-castingare commonly used for mass production, there is currently no additive manufacturing (AM) technology available for producing complex parts in serial runs at competitive speeds and costs. The EIC-funded MMD project proposes a new metal AM technology targeting aluminium parts. MMD meets the demand for an efficient, fast and cost-effective AM technology for serial production. Using liquid metal directly from aluminium wire feedstock, this approach reduces production costs by 75 % and offers a production time that is 10 times faster. MMD allows for a high degree of automation, particularly suitable for serial batch production.
Objective
High-strength, lightweight and conductivity are properties that set aluminum apart as the 2nd widely used metal in the world. Mechanical manufacturing techniques like CNC milling or die casting are industry standards for mass production of industrial parts. However, when it comes to additive manufacturing (AM) to increase the complexity of the parts there is no existing AM technology for serial runs or on-demand/spare parts at competitive speeds and costs.
ValCUN fills the gap for complex aluminum parts to deliver the most economical, fastest and energy-efficient AM technology, ready for serial production.
Molten Metal Deposition (MMD) is our unique single-step metal additive manufacturing technology, with initial focus on aluminum. Unlike powder- and laser-based AM techniques (DED, LPBF, FDM/MIM), we produce parts directly with liquid metal from aluminum wire feedstock as a paradigm-shift in metal AM to reduce production costs by 75% while being 10x faster and allowing high degree of automation for 1-10k serial batch production with minimal post-processing.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC-ACC-BF - HORIZON EIC Accelerator Blended FinanceCoordinator
9041 Oostakker
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.