News

The 3DP Pilot Platform for Pitching and Implementing new cross regional projects was launched in October 2019 in order to further position the 3DP Pilot as an open and flexible cross-regional platform for generating and facilitating the implementation of ambitious demonstration projects that are not (per se) under the scope of the current demo cases. 

In 2019, following a ‘Call for new ideas’ launched in September 2019 and a ‘Call for Expressions of Interest’ in October-November 2019, we have been compiling the interests expressed by the partners. Results were very promising: for every project idea proposed, at least 6 regions (and at least 10 organisations) have expressed interest in further collaborating on the proposed areas! We are now moving towards further elaboration of the demo cases.

In November 2020, a call for new project ideas was launched again . Very rapidly, 5 new project ideas were submitted and 4 of them were pitched during the Plenary Meeting 2020 which was organised on 26 November. The 4 projects ideas (and associated project idea owners) are listed below. Please do not hesitate to contact Jean-Francois Romainville if you are interested in one of these projects: 

• Scalability of serial-production: system approach of the AM-factory, automatization of post-production (South-NL, Brainport Development, contact person Ruben Fokkema) 
• Automated removal of support structures and surface smoothing of 3D printed metal parts (Lower-Austria, FOTEC, contact person Helmut Loibl)
• 3D metal printing of catalytic reactor structures (South-NL, AddCat, contact person Gerald van Santen)
• “Hyberfacturing”, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France), University of Grenoble in cooperation with Baden-Württemberg (Germany), University of Stuttgart; contact person Frédéric Vignat. 

The cross regional and industrial interests related to these ideas will be ‘tested’ in the coming weeks. This can lead to the projects being further developed and can, ultimately, lead (if criteria are met) to:

1. The emergence of new demo cases, if the criteria are being met for the new demo case, and/or
2. The integration of new projects into existing demo cases, when relevant linkages can be made, and/or
3. The launch and implementation of specific industry-driven cross regional demonstration projects enabled by the 3DP Pilot and outside the scope of existing demo cases (e.g. if the scope of the proposed area is too specific too generate various product/application specific cases).

Possible linkages with existing demo cases will be assessed continuously. For projects that will not be integrated into existing demo cases and for which the aforementioned criteria are met, this might lead (among others) to the formal launch of new demo case(s) in the Pilot.