MANUELA Final Conference: Sharing of success stories

On February 9, 2023, the 20 partners in the MANUELA project gathered at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg for a final conference. The industry, and society were invited to take part in the results from the 4-year project and the launch of Pilot Line Production Services developed by the MANUELA project.

The MANUELA project's goal was to develop a world-class pilot line service for additive manufacturing in metals, from design and simulation to post-processing and qualification. Offering time and cost-saving industrial solutions.

An impressive number of 16 use cases were presented by Emmanuel Onillon, CSEM, of which 10 use cases have come from different companies around Europe. He explained how the work on the use cases have started with the design phase, simulating design and process optimizations, material and print technology aspects as well as post processing steps to end up as qualified products to be verified in real applications in the involved industries. The AM-technology’s specific results were presented by Alberta Aversa, Politecnico di Torino for LPBF and by Yannic Westrich, FAU for EBM.

Reflections from the team

Olivier Tabaste, Hexagon talk about the rapid development of simulation tools for product designs as well as minimizing support structures impressed and really open up an engineer’s imagination and interest for doing even more.

- It was very interesting to listen to reflections from the project participants on the learnings from the work process. For example hearing what Amine Yousfi and Ludwig Eriksson, working with the postprocesses, describing the big difference in results levels when the experts from all development steps are involved in a teamwork already from the beginning, enabling speed, performance and quality wins in the end, says Marie-Louise Bergholt from RISE.

Workshop tour at Chalmers and RISE

The AM-lab tour at Chalmers University of Technology was very appreciated and started several discussions continuing during the transfer to RISE in Mölndal. The afternoon workshop tour at RISE showed both the MANUELA Pilot Line testbed as well as the other parts and facilities of the Application Center for Additive Manufacturing led by RISE. Seeing is believing and that really goes for the impression on the participants.

Launch of Pilot Line Production Services

Seyed Hosseini, director of the AM-Center, described how the outcome of the MANUELA project now is made accessible for the European industry. Chalmers, CSEM, CIM 4.0, Hexagon, Neue Material Fürth, and RISE continues to work together to offer services developed in the MANUELA project, through the AM Center platform. Depending on the service requested the partners will collaborate or work stand-alone to ensure the best quality and cost. (Information about the Pilot Line Production Services)

Discussions and dreams around AM

During a panel discussion lead by Eduard Hryha from Chalmers the industry was represented by Andreas Graichen from Siemens Energy and Sven Bengtsson from Höganäs. Also, Lars Nyborg from Chalmers, Emmanuel Onillion from CSEM and David Ohlsson from RISE participated in the debate were lots of reflections, thoughts and future dreams around additive manufacturing was shared and discussed.

After all information and insights from the program the discussions among the participants directly took off during the dinner, reflecting and sharing ideas and invites for further collaborations, building further upon the MANUELA project outcomes.