With the swedish aluminum supplier, a strong and highly experienced partner has joined the ACAM-community. 

Gränges Powder Metallurgy, based in Stockholm, is a leading global supplier of rolled aluminum products for heat exchanger applications, specialty packaging and niche markets. The Team at Gränges develops, manufactures, and markets advanced materials that improve efficiency in customers’ manufacturing process. 

In the field of additive manufacturing, Gränges is already active in laser powder bed fusion, specifically in the production of AM powders based on aluminum alloys. In addition, the company produces both standard and niche alloys for specific applications, such as high strength at elevated temperatures. In the field of powder metallurgy, Gränges can look back on 30 years of experience.  

Through a business membership in the ACAM community, Gränges joins our broad network of industry and research and gains access to accomplished researchers, new technologies and a breadth of expertise. With the help of these perspectives, Gränges plans to position itself more broadly in additive manufacturing for the future and is open for new AM technologies. 

“We believe that ACAM will bring a significant contribution by supporting us in some of our key AM activities, allowing us to move quickly and efficiently. The collaboration with ACAM will help us to navigate and validate some of our assumptions and to bring our ideas to life” says Greta D’Angelo, AM Business Development Lead at Gränges. 

In collaboration, ACAM supports Gränges in managing plans and processes, thus advancing the developments of new materials and services as well as the integration of innovative AM systems. 

We look forward to a successful collaboration! 

We are proud to introduce Kurtz Ersa as a new member of our community. As a tradition-steeped family business from the Spessart region of Germany, Kurtz Ersa is a globally operating technology provider producing, among other things, foundry and particle foam machines as well as smart systems for electronics production.  

The far-reaching potential of Kutz Ersa is bundled by the business units “Electronics Production Equipment”, “Automation” and “Moulding Machines”. With the distribution of the Alpha 140 in cooperation with LMI, Kurtz Ersa entered the field of metallic 3D printing last year and can now advance its own area of additive manufacturing in cooperation with ACAM.   

Due to this wide range of different technologies and competences, we have found an interesting and experienced partner in Kurtz Ersa. We are looking forward to working together!   

ACAM connects decision-makers and peers of Additive Manufacturing and builds project consortia at its Annual Meeting Digital. Every year in fall the RWTH Campus Aachen is the gathering location for the decision-makers of the industry and the peers of research from throughout the world, where they exchange views, information, and experiences regarding Additive Manufacturing, as well as to determine the project consortia for the upcoming year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated contact restrictions, ACAM set up this year a digital event platform, where its guests were also able to connect, learn, and network.

Additive Manufacturing continues to expand with new players entering the market and new technologies being developed. One of the ways that ACAM assists these companies is to nurture a trusting network that leverages research and industry collaboration. For this reason, ACAM offers every year two Community Meetings, which enable its industry members and research partners to discuss the future of additive manufacturing and build project consortia. One of them is the Annual Meeting, which took place on September 30, 2020.

This year ACAM reduces the boundaries between the digital and personal interaction

By knowing that sense of community is also crucial for business relationships, ACAM used the online platform Remo, to enable engagement and networking opportunities at the Annual Meeting. Just like at the physical event, the research partners presented the project topics designed according to suggestions and ideas of the whole ACAM community, so the industry members can choose the ones they are interested to support in the upcoming year. At this year’s event 16 topics were presented and ultimately 7 project consortia were formed. The topics are:

•  Benchmark of Business Model Development for AM – Time-To-Market, Individualization, Agile Production
• Practical comparison of Binder Jetting Technologies
• Development of functionally adapted high-performance heat exchangers using Laser Powder Bed Fusion
• Development of an ultra-hard (> 800 HV) Fe-based alloy for Additive Manufacturing
• Functionalized coating and repair of tools using LMD/EHLA with direct finishing
• Processing high carbon steels by LPBF with advanced process strategies
• Technology benchmark for AM of copper materials

The ACAM community continues to grow

This year’s annual meeting was also used as an opportunity to introduce Nissan as a new basic member of the community.
ACAM is still open for new members. Depending on the scope of the desired cooperation, the interested companies can choose between three different membership models with different range of services: the basic, business, or cooperation membership. These models provide an individual, comprehensive access to the network’s service and are open to national and international companies.

A holistic perspective on Additive Manufacturing in Aachen

The future development of Additive Manufacturing especially in the areas of digitalization, new technologies, and technology transfer will be of major importance for the ACAM and its partners in order to fully industrialize the technology. Before the background of the corona pandemic, strong networks become even more important for this common goal. Both trends, strong networks, and deep technological expertise are two of the main drivers of ACAM’s activities, which require even more attention to our future way. In order to provide time and space for these tasks, Prof. Schleifenbaum will strengthen his engagement within the ACAM and has terminated his secondary employment at Fraunhofer-ILT at the same time. This decision will also foster ACAM capabilities to serve as the integrated key account for all AM activities on Aachen Campus, supported by more than 10 research partners from RWTH Aachen University, FH Aachen, Fraunhofer IPT, and ILT.

Contact

Ingrid Bongiovanni Roll
Marketing & Community Manager

T   +49 241 9426 1025

Join our team! We are hiring a student assistant for
Marketing & Community Management

We are hiring a student assistant for Marketing & Community Management to assist us in developing, posting, and tracking content for various channels (articles for media, web pages, social media, etc.) as well as in organizing events. Further details about the offer you can find here (in German).

Join our Team! We are looking forward to hearing from you.

We are happy to announce that ACAM becomes part of of the Senseering GmbH’s MyDataEconomy alpha-phase to take digitalization for Additive Manufacturing to the next level.

MyDataEconomy is a decentralized ecosystem based on IOTA tangle technology, that digitalizes very complex data sources in a simple way. It ensures data integrity, data sovereignty, and data immutability. Moreover, it enables a resource-saving, environmentally friendly, and scalable use with its fee-less transactions.

ACAM will be responsible to bring the challenges and needs of AM integration to the platform.

For more information please see the press release of Senseering Gmbh.