News

Over the last weeks, the 3D-Printing Pilot project has put a particular emphasis on three key action lines, which resulted in some promising progress. Within the currently identified strategic collaboration areas (“demo cases”) companies from the partner regions are actively working on the specificities of the demo cases in order to prepare their implementations. A dedicated event, which will take place in Bologna on 18 June, will allow discussing the industry-driven cases related to the ‘Multi-materials components by hybrid 3D Printing manufacturing’ demo case. Furthermore, activities are carried out in the 3DP Pilot funded projects; the DG REGIO Pilot Action and the 3DP Pan EU project. The strong emphasis on industrial needs and challenges is reflected in the scope of the existing demo cases, which has been slightly revised in order to increase flexibility and integration of new technological solutions within existing demo cases.

Over the last weeks, the 3D-Printing Pilot project has put a particular emphasis on three key action lines, which resulted in some promising progress.Within the currently identified strategic collaboration areas (“demo cases”), new specific industry-driven demonstration cases were identified and are being specified (technical activities, actors, bottlenecks, etc.). Companies from South-Netherlands, Lombardy, East-Netherlands, Saxony, Region Örebro and Emilia Romagna are, together with facility centres and clusters from the network, actively working on the specificities of these cases in order to prepare their implementations. A dedicated event, which will take place in Bologna on 18 June, will allow discussing the industry-driven cases related to the ‘Multi-materials components by hybrid 3D Printing manufacturing’ democase.

In the context of the DG REGIO Pilot Action, bottlenecks such as funding and certification that hamper the implementation of the industrial cases are currently being addressed. Activities that have taken place in the context of this pilot action are:

• the preparation of leaflets for the industry
• the drafting of approaches for certification
• the planning of meetings with ECs experts to actively address major barriers.

Regarding funding, while structural solutions still have to be secured for the coming years, the 3D-Printing Pilot project is actively working on confirmed opportunities (the 3DP Pan EU project, which will support 10 industrial cases in Europe) and tentative ones (e.g. an Interreg NWE project proposal for supporting the Additive-Subtractive democase is in preparation).

The strong emphasis on industrial needs and challenges is reflected in the scope of the existing demo cases, which has been slightly revised in order to increase flexibility and integration of new technological solutions within existing demo cases. In particular, one demo case extended its scope to offer SMEs access to ‘Emerging and non-traditional 3D Printing Technologies for large parts (more than 1 meter).

For more information on the 3DP Pilot project, please contact the pilot leads:
Barbara Cattoor, Pedro Rocha, Vincent Duchene, or Jean-François Romainville