Summary
Thanks to emerging materials and digital technologies, the product design space is larger than ever. Despite this, EU manufacturers are struggling to innovate, with traditional tools presenting a major bottleneck.
Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs.
FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally.
FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads.
The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries.
The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.
Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs.
FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally.
FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads.
The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries.
The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.
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More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101138380 |
| Start date: | 01-01-2024 |
| End date: | 31-12-2026 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | - 4 131 800,00 Euro |
Cordis data
Original description
Thanks to emerging materials and digital technologies, the product design space is larger than ever. Despite this, EU manufacturers are struggling to innovate, with traditional tools presenting a major bottleneck.Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs.
FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally.
FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads.
The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries.
The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.
Status
SIGNEDCall topic
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02Update Date
29-01-2024
Geographical location(s)
Structured mapping
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Factories of the Future Partnership - Made in Europe Partnership
R&I Objective 1.3: Zero-defect and zero-downtime high-precision manufacturing, including predictive quality and non-destructive inspection methods
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Organisations
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| PRIMA ADDITIVE SRL (Coördinator)
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| 3 DRIVERS - ENGENHARIA, INOVACAO EAMBIENTE LDA
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| AIMEN
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| ATOP S.P.A.
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| ATS APPLIED TECH SYSTEMS LTD
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| CAILABS
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| DEPUY (IRELAND) UNLIMITED
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| DIAMOUTILS SAS
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| European Federation for Welding, Joining & Cutting - EWF
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| I.M.A. INDUSTRIA MACCHINE AUTOMATICHE SPA (IMA)
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| KOSMOS TREYS
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| ROBUST AO GMBH
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| SYNOVA SA
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| THE MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY CENTRE LIMITED LBG (MTC) - HVM Catapult
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| THE UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD
The FLASH project will develop the next generation of laser machining by integrating three laser sources and three beam delivery heads in a single laser module, incorporating dynamic beam shaping and in-process monitoring and control. The standardization will most likely focus on the beam shaping features, optics and photonics, robotics, life cycle assessment, among others.