3D Printing for the Automotive Industry

EUR 10.7 Million from the Federal Government


Aerial Photography of Cars

Completely drive-ready cars cannot be printed from 3D printers. How the additive process could produce their plastic components is being investigated in the POLYLINE project by, among others, the Chair of Production Engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). Nationwide, 15 partners from science and industry are developing the digitized production line for the automotive industry. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 10.7 million euros for three years.

Additive manufacturing (AF) is intended to expand conventional production techniques such as machining or casting. In this process, the material is generated layer by layer from a powdery material by laser on the basis of digital design data (sintering). Even complex structures can thus be realized without much additional effort. So far, the process has only been used to a limited extent in mass production. This is due, among other things, to the digital data sets that are not available continuously at many interfaces. This makes monitoring the production process more difficult, and errors often occur.

The 3D printing experts at UDE around Prof. Gerd Witt are optimizing production. To do this, they take into account various aspects of the process, post-processing and powder handling. "We want to make the powder available for sintering with constant quality," says scientist Lars Meyer. He is conducting research into additive manufacturing in the plastics sector. "If products are to be mass-produced to a high standard of quality and resources are to be used efficiently at the same time, this is the best basis".

POLYLINE is the abbreviation for Integrated Line Application of polymer-based AM technologies. The project is coordinated by the company EOS, which offers technologies in industrial 3D printing of metals and plastics.


Further information:
Institute of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Chair of Production Engineering:
Prof. Dr. Gerd Witt, Tel. 0203/37 9-3360, gerd.witt@uni-due.de,
Lars Meyer, phone 0203/37 9-3241, lars.meyer@uni-due.de 

Editor: Alexandra Nießen, Tel. 0203/37 9-1487, alexandra.niessen@uni-due.de