AMPeRe
The AMPeRE Project, Industrialization of Additive Manufacturing, through multi-purpose post-PRocEssing, is a business-driven initiative focusing on post-processing, specifically for powder bed fusion methods.
There remain many challenges before additive manufacturing (AM) can be considered an industrialized process. For powder bed fusion methods (PBF), productivity and efficiency are greatly hampered by manual methods for removing support structures and residual powder. In addition, there are also major challenges associated with surface finishing and polishing of complex geometries, where traditional methods may not even be applicable.
The project aims to industrialize PBF by evaluating and further developing a versatile post-processing method based on electrochemical polishing. In an extension, the project aims to improve the possibilities for efficient finishing of AM products by demonstrating a production process with faster lead times, higher degree of automation, lower cost and higher functionality in the final product.
The project is aimed specifically to aerospace and orthopedic manufacturing, but the results will also offer competitive advantages to other industry segments where AM depends on effective surface treatment.
The project is led by Sports Tech Research Centre at Mid Sweden University and is conducted together with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and nine companies in different industry areas.
The work is carried out within the strategic innovation Program Metallic Materials, a joint venture of VINNOVA Sweden’s innovation agency, FORMAS Scientific Council and the Swedish Energy Agency.