AddUp’s Tooling Competence Centre has launched a project focused on developing and implementing additive manufacturing for injection moulding applications.
The 2024 Additive Manufacturing for Injection Molding (#2024AMIM) project will run for a year, include 17 industrial companies, and focus on seven areas of importance for tooling manufacturers.
Through the #2024AMIM project, AddUp and one of its partners will present challenges and innovations for one of these focus areas each month. AddUp will then create samples, benchmarking parts and production moulds in a bid to develop solutions for these areas. Vigorous testing and data collection will be prepared and published at the end of the project, with the aim of educating the tooling industry about the capabilities of additive manufacturing.
Tooling manufacturers have been encouraged to participate in the project by bringing their own challenging tooling applications for evaluation and optimisation, but an existing application is not required. Each member is expected to actively participate in the monthly meetings, collaborating and providing feedback with other participants.
So far, those participants include:
- Swiss Steel Group (SSG)
- Siemens AG
- Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT)
- AZO
- Hotset
- The Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV)
- 3D Laser BW
- Herding GmbH
- Air Liquide
- IwF
- Härtha Group
- AZL Aachen GmbH
- Ingenieurbuero Juri Muller (IBJM)
- IPG Laser GmbH
- Aachen Center for Additive Manufacturing (ACAM)
- WBA Tooling Academy
- Novanta Europe GmbH
These organisations will come together to solve challenges around:
- Tool steel development
- Productivity
- Quality
- Time savings
- Functions
- Sustainability
- Work safety and powder handling
The #2024AMIM project will kick off in the first week of February, with a meeting hosted by Siemens AG at its Erlangen, Germany facility. It represents AddUp’s second research and development effort relating to tooling after it announced in 2023 that it is participating in a study which is exploring the adoption of 3D printing for six tooling companies.
