Boosting resource efficiency for circular industry by additive manufacturing

Purpose and goal:

The goal of the project is to boost industrial acceptance of additive manufacturing (AM) which enables resource effective and circular approaches. Compared to the conventional production techniques where material is removed from a larger piece of work AM ensures minimum material waste as it starts from scratch, adding material to create a component or a product.

Moreover, AM enables on-demand production. No unnecessary inventory stock will ever be made. Furthermore, AM ebables “design for circularity” thus circularity aspect can already be included in the beginning of the process. Expected results and effects:

A new type of multi-material AM system based on fused deposition modelling (FDM) technology will be developed. Materials in granular form are processed and deposited by one and the same nozzle, capable of creating objects having different functional zones and seamless transitions between the zones. This avoids the drawbacks of the existing technologies using either multiple nozzles, one per material, resulting in discontinuity and poor mechanical strength, or a tri-extruder system that only works with material filaments.

Approach and implementation:

In addition to the development of the new type of multimaterial-AM-system, material solutions will also be developed as compatibility and bonding strength between the materials are essential for the built object. The new AM system will be integrated with the FDM platform at RISE Innventia. The techniques developed will be validated in the form of prosthetic/orthotic assistive devices (demonstrators), where there are well-established testing methods; the quality requirements and standards are generally tougher and higher than for ordinary consumer products.