FLASH | Flexible Laser-based manufacturing through precision photon distribution

Summary
Thanks to emerging materials and digital technologies, the product design space is larger than ever. Despite this, EU manufacturers are struggling to innovate, with traditional tools presenting a major bottleneck.

Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs.

FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally.

FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads.

The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries.

The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101138380
Start date: 01-01-2024
End date: 31-12-2026
Total budget - Public funding: - 4 131 800,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Thanks to emerging materials and digital technologies, the product design space is larger than ever. Despite this, EU manufacturers are struggling to innovate, with traditional tools presenting a major bottleneck.

Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs.

FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally.

FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads.

The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries.

The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.

Status

SIGNED

Call topic

HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02

Update Date

29-01-2024
Images
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Factories of the Future Partnership (FoF) - Made in Europe Partnership (MiE)
Made in Europe (MiE)
Made in Europe Call 2023
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02: High-precision OR complex product manufacturing – potentially including the use of photonics (Made in Europe and Photonics Partnerships) (IA)
Photonics Partnership
Photonics Partnership Call 2023
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02: High-precision OR complex product manufacturing – potentially including the use of photonics (Made in Europe and Photonics Partnerships) (IA)
Horizon Europe
HORIZON.2 Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
HORIZON.2.4 Digital, Industry and Space
HORIZON.2.4.0 Cross-cutting call topics
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02: High-precision OR complex product manufacturing – potentially including the use of photonics (Made in Europe and Photonics Partnerships) (IA)
HORIZON.2.4.1 Manufacturing Technologies
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01
HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-02: High-precision OR complex product manufacturing – potentially including the use of photonics (Made in Europe and Photonics Partnerships) (IA)