Additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is an essential technology to address specific production challenges. 3D printing enables the on-demand creation of complex products in a single, continuous process. However, productivity and quality limitations remain a significant technological barrier to its large-scale market integration.

At Flanders Make, we have open and modular additive manufacturing platforms for research into the 3D production process — focusing on both quality and speed. Our pilot-scale equipment supports additive production using:

• Selective laser melting of metals
• Selective laser sintering of polymers
• (In)direct sintering of ceramics

Key Features

The main features of our infrastructure include:

• Open control system: full access to machine control software, allowing integration of additional modules to accelerate research.
• Extensive monitoring capabilities: enabling the testing of new types of sensors, cameras, and monitoring systems to support innovative data and quality analysis techniques — from the lowest level (metal melting) to the highest (overall system performance).
• Access to critical components and subsystems: for testing new mechatronic modules (detection, control, actuation) in a relevant AM metal printer.
• Baseplate heating up to 500°C for specific AM machines.

Offer

We provide an open and modular platform to improve layer-by-layer AM production systems for selective laser melting of metals. This infrastructure gives companies access to, and control over, the various aspects of the AM process — enabling them to optimise the build process and develop industry-ready manufacturing systems.

Our offer includes:

• Broadening the materials portfolio for AM (ceramics, special Cu, Ni or W alloys, biomaterials, …)
• Relating process conditions to static and dynamic mechanical properties through analysis of microstructures, textures, porosity, thermal stresses, etc.
• Machine design and process optimisation, both software and hardware
• Quality control, including X-ray CT inspection, process monitoring, and post-processing