Objective

OBJECTIVE

The aim of DREAM is to significantly improve the performance of laser Powder Bed Fusion of titanium, aluminium, and steel components in terms of speed, costs, material use and reliability, also using a Life Cycle approach, whilst producing work pieces with controlled and significantly increased fatigue life, as well with higher strength-to-weight ratios.

The motivation for the project is to go far beyond the state of the art in laser-based Powder Bed Fusion, by mastering of all stages of the process chain; among the numerous industrial applications, the project is focused on components for prosthetic, automotive and moulding applications to optimize the procedure respectively for titanium, aluminium and steel.

DREAM targets the development of a competitive supply chain to increase the productivity of laser-based Additive Manufacturing and to bring it a significant step further towards larger scale industrial use.

OPPORTUNITIES

Prevention of powder contamination phenomena
Groundbreaking freedom of design for extremely lightweight components with novel and integrated functionalities
Fast production with no tooling needs
No tooling investment costs
High flexibility

NEEDS

Solid foundations, mainly in terms of process reliability and robustness
Quality assurance and long-term predictability of parts
Reduced machine-to-machine variance across materials and machine types
Standard operating procedures for raw materials and for product control
Improved control of process performance in different set-ups, in order to set desired objectives in terms of costs and productivity for different expected responses

THE CHALLENGE

In order to upscale the results and to reach an industrial relevant level of productivity, the project is focused on the following four main challenges: