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FABIMED | Fabrication and Functionalization of BioMedical Microdevices

02-09-2013

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01-09-2016

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Technologies and enablers
Advanced materials in manufacturing systems
Comment: Novel and inedit tool materials, particularly glass, DLC and sapphire based tools, will be used as alternative materials for microrreplication inserts, thanks to their thermal, physical, optical, surface and mechanical properties, which make them . Siloxane-based moulds produced by direct fabrication (masterless production) will also be used as novel tooling material for ceramic microrreplication, with mechanical properties adapted to the evolution .

GlobalAM | Enabling Laser Powder Bed Fusion for Large Scale Production of Multi-Material Components

01-01-2024

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31-12-2026

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Technologies and enablers
Advanced materials in manufacturing systems
Comment:

Multi-material powders: Pure copper and copper alloys dominate the field of materials for additive manufacturing with high thermal conductivity, which will be the first entrance market for the technologies developed in this project. Due to its reflectivity for certain light spectra, pure copper is very difficult to process with conventional manufacturing processes using IR lasers in conventional LPBF 3D printers. The solution is currently to use high power IR lasers or to change the laser wavelength so that the energy absorption on the exposed layer is higher than IR lasers. In this sense, green lasers in particular are applied, whose ability to melt highly reflective materials is up to 5 times higher and can have significantly lower power. Processing limited to high power red lasers and green lasers limits the application impact to only one hundredth of all LPBF 3D printer installations in the world.

Within the project, we aim not only to select suitable materials for multi-material 3D printing for the chosen application, but also to test and apply alloys or non-ferrous metals that would reach at least the level of pure copper in their thermal conductivity, while suppressing the natural reflectivity of these materials and the tendency to oxidation. In particular, a suitable treatment of the atomized non-ferrous metal or alloy with a suitable element (so-called coating) should help to achieve the chosen objectives, which will result in a powder material with a chemically distinct core and shell (so-called core-shell powder). A suitably selected element for coating the atomized powder can achieve not only a reduction in reflectivity but also extend the lifetime of the materials by reducing oxidation during handling, processing, and subsequent recycling. However, this treatment must maintain the original properties of the materials and the element should not significantly affect the stability of the melt pool. The selected alloys and non-ferrous elements will be analyzed for manufacturability using laboratory atomizers and verified for scalability for industrial production. The project also aims for the selected materials to be a suitable input for zero waste AM technologies and to enable sustainable production and reuse of the produced materials for re-atomization or secondary products.

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