Innovation
Bring us the moon. And beyond.
Prima Additive's strength also lies in its partnerships with companies, research centres, universities, and associations working towards full Open Innovation.
On the path to innovation, Prima Additive moves within the areas of Industry 4.0, the Circular Economy, Advanced Manufacturing processes, research of advanced materials and photonics.
Prima Additive is an active participant in several research consortia and innovation projects focused on additive technologies, both in Europe and regionally. With its committed and continuous involvement, Prima Additive is recognized today as a major player at a European level and aspires to contribute substantially in expanding the use and implementation of Additive Manufacturing within the concept of the Factory of the Future.
Discover the innovation projects representing a significant opportunity for both the Prima Industrie Group and Prima Additive, together with the main industrial and R&D players in Europe.
Sustainability
MICS: Made in Italy Circolare e Sostenibile
MICS is one of the Extended Partnerships (PE4) between universities, research centers, and companies, funded by Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca with EU NextGenerationEU (PNRR) funds. Prima Additive is involved in Spoke 6: “Additive Manufacturing as a Disruptive Factor of the Twin Transition,” aiming to revolutionize Additive Manufacturing as an enabling technology for the twin transition, in particular working on:
• Development of additive technologies for consolidating precious and non-precious metals in the fashion industry, improving product quality and versatility.
• Intelligent solutions for zero-defect, zero-waste additive manufacturing to enhance sustainability and efficiency.
• Additive techniques for machinery repair, regeneration, and life extension, reducing operational costs and environmental impact.
• Development of hybrid sources to optimize additive manufacturing processes, improving product quality and versatility.
Wavetaylor: Wavetailor - Modular laser sources for sustainable production of short personalized production series
WAVETAILOR focuses on two industrial scenarios related to the complex multi-material component and assembly. The first one is the Directed Energy Deposition of a multimaterial leading edge for a hypersonic hydrogen-driven airplane, while the second relates to the Powder Bed Fusion of complex multi-material assembly of a drone for urban delivery. The challenges in both cases are related to zero-defect manufacturing, sustainability, and first-time right manufacturing. WAVETAILOR aims to solve the high-precision in complex material structure manufacturing, the disassembly, reuse, and recycling of components while reducing the environmental footprint of both the manufacturing process and the components themselves.
EnerMan: EnerMan H2020 - Energy Efficient Manufacturing System Management
Prima Additive's involvement in the ENERMAN project highlight its commitment to sustainable manufacturing. By developing advanced energy management systems, the company aims to enhance energy efficiency and significantly reduce CO2 emissions on next-generation additive machinery.
Digital Path
FLUENTLY: The essence of human-robot interaction
Fluently leverages the latest advances in AI-driven decision-making to achieve true collaboration between humans and machines, adapting to highly dynamic manufacturing environments.
Prima Additive will focus on automating the part program for the repair of a component, using advanced AI algorithms to enhance efficiency and precision. This innovative approach aims to ensure high-quality, safe, and sustainable manufacturing practices.
DILAPRO: DIgital Laser PROduction: Digital Twins of Laser Processing for Multi-Capability Manufacturing of Complex Components and Certification
The software project called DILAPRO is particularly focused on the production of demanding components that need to be manufactured and used on location, where it is physically impossible to send parts for testing or await external certification. Prima Additive will test and integrate the DILAPRO software to enhance DED machine capabilities with advanced sensors for on-site production of demanding components.
Applications
ConstructAdd: Resource-efficient steel CONSTRUCTion using ADDitive manufacturing
ConstructAdd aims to enhance resource efficiency in the European steel industry by providing tools and guidelines to fully leverage metal 3D printing. This initiative will optimize the design, production, and maintenance of complex steel geometries. Prima Additive will optimize and 3D print use cases with a focus on design for additive manufacturing. This approach will enhance the efficiency, precision, and quality of the final components.
GlobalAM: Enabling Laser Powder Bed Fusion for Large Scale Production of Multi-Material Components
The project aims to enable laser powder bed fusion for high precision mass production of multi-material components on dissimilar substrate materials. Project results will enhance Prima Additive's LPBF machines by introducing new technologies that enable direct printing on final products with various materials quickly and precisely. This unique capability will provide a competitive edge, allowing for the creation of hybrid solutions and unique components across diverse markets.
Innovative Processes
WISE: Multi-scale multi-process machine for high value-added complex products with disruptive functionalities
WISE sets a new frontier for product complexity by shifting the focus from geometry to functionality, introducing features such as self-healing, triggered biomolecule diffusion, and smart repairing. This disruption redefines current design methodology, leveraging advanced AI-aided engineering and multi-scale, multi-process manufacturing to achieve unprecedented complexity. WISE has the potential to drive a discontinuity in the growth of the European industry by convincingly demonstrating an innovative, competitive, and scalable manufacturing concept based on a single machine that integrates macroscale processing (i.e., DED via hybrid blue-IR lasers) and micro-nano scale processing (i.e., fs and ns laser ablation, 2PP, DALP).
FLASH: Flexible Laser-based manufacturing through precision photon distribution
FLASH will launch the next generation of laser machining, based on four key technology developments:
- Integration of three laser sources and three beam delivery heads in a single laser module
- Dynamic beam shaping
- In-process monitoring and control
- Process design for laser-based manufacturing
The FLASH platform will integrate three laser sources for simultaneous multi-wavelength emission across a broad pulse length range, with dynamic beam shaping in a hybrid robotic/CNC setup featuring three distinct beam delivery heads. Supported by an advanced cloud-based digital infrastructure, it will enable process design, in-line monitoring, and system control.
Prima Additive will provide and modify the new robotic cell IANUS platform, that will be re-engineered in order to accommodate three individual laser sources for the different laser processes that will be integrated in the same machine.
PoSAddive: PoSAddive - Powder Sheet Additive Manufacturing
PoSAddive aims to enhance the additive manufacturing process of metallic materials using a new powder application method for efficient and waste-free use of raw materials. This patented technology (PCT/EP2020/053507 and EP22158106) replaces the powder bed with a revolutionary powder sheet concept. The technology will be demonstrated at TRL7 with automotive and mobility sector parts by CRF and Gemmate. Prima Additive will introduce a new production system to process the material, developing and customizing it to meet the project's specific needs.
Materials
MULTHEM: Multi Material Additive Manufacturing for Lightweight and Thermal Management
The vision of MULTHEM is to develop a reliable and validated Additively Manufactured (AM) CFC process with enhanced thermal conductivity with different material combinations and nanotechnology. This innovative approach will allow the development of components, such as battery and motor housings with dual functionality comprising structural and cooling features and with a more cost-effective approach than traditional methods. This solution will enhance the product performance, first by the weight reduction achieved by designs that only AM enables, and second, by using CFC-metal structures with enhanced thermal conductivity strategies, lighter and stronger than aluminium or steel.
Human-Centric Industry
CONVERGING Home | CONVERGING | EU Funded Project
The CONVERGING project aims to develop, deploy, and validate smart and reconfigurable production systems featuring multiple autonomous agents, such as collaborative robots, AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles), and humans, capable of operating in diverse and challenging production environments, helping the operator in daily job and improve the results and efficiency in the additive manufacturing sector.
Collaborations
EIT Manufacturing
Prima Additive is a member of the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KIC) on manufacturing launched by the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) to work and promote future developments in European manufacturing. Prima Additive participates with innovation projects on the digital path to Additive Manufacturing and with training programmes related to this technology.
https://eitmanufacturing.eu/activities/eit-projects/
Competence Center CIM4.0
Prima Additive is a partner of the Competence Center in Turin working on application development, training courses, technology transfer and innovative developments related to Additive Manufacturing technology for industrial components and the digital pathway linked to it. The Competence Center houses Prima Additive machines used to study and further the technology.
Digital path
5G FF
Prima Additive is working with TIM to bring 5G to the manufacturing environment. Through new 5G connectivity it will be possible for Prima Additive machine users to make use of digital services and access the machine remotely.
Quality
Prima Additive adopts solutions for digital systems management, making the most of augmented and virtual reality solutions applied to its machines. In addition, through the joint development of advanced process monitoring solutions, it will be possible to make the additive manufacturing process more industrial.
Integradde
Prima Additive is participating in the development of a digital environment for the entire additive manufacturing value chain, integrating new simulation systems on Direct Energy Deposition (DED) technology to strengthen the repairing and manufacturing process. Through the adoption of closed-circuit monitoring, Prima Additive provides a reliable DED process.
Processes and Application
Amatho
Prima Additive explores the use of DED technology for the aeronautical sector, collaborating with Leonardo helicopters and producing a tiltrotor component to be tested by the user.
Iamspace
Prima Additive is participating in validating a methodology to characterise the effects of specific additive manufacturing defects under severe static loads. It deals with the reduction of non-destructive inspection and measurement stresses in the additive manufacturing of highly loaded mission-critical space components.
Modular
Prima Additive is involved in developments around lunar orbit and the lunar surface as a new milestone for human space exploration. Particular interest is being placed in the Shelter, a habitable lunar module and an starting point for human exploration of the moon. Prima Additive contributes with the feasibility study of a machine suited to working in the environment and with lunar material.
AMC
Prima Additive is working with Argotec to create an innovative two-phase heat exchange system using Additive Manufacturing for small satellite applications.
Impact
To take additive manufacturing to the next level, Prima Additive is working to develop reliable, higher productivity industrial solutions, systems designed for markets such as the automotive sector.