Increasing product complexity and consumer customization have resulted in greater product variety coupled with higher demands on manufacturing processes. Within this research group, innovative and efficient manufacturing processes and facilities are therefore developed and transferred into industrial applications. The activities of the Research Area "Manufacturing Processes" concentrate on both the development of new technologies, e.g., additive manufacturing by means of electron or laser beams or activated polymerization in 3-Dprinting, and on the optimization of existing manufacturing processes through, e.g., simulations. An additional focus is on the processing of multi-materials in additive manufacturing, whereby both, part and coatings, can be manufactured together within a hybrid process. Through the overall analysis of process chains, further simulative approaches are advanced in order to optimize the entire product development process as well as quality and costs. Unconventional approaches (such as reusable, form-flexible tools for injection molding) demonstrate the innovative character of the field and the preparedness to take manufacturing processes in promising, new directions.

The following are focal points for this field of research:

·         Rapid Manufacturing:  Through layer manufacturing, multi-component parts can be processed directly from CAD data. This research field focuses on the systematic design and optimization of additive manufacturing.

·         Quality Control:  The focus is on the development and integration of non-destructive test methods for series production as well as on cross-process quality controls and tolerance simulations.

Project References

• Manufacturing and assembly of high-load turbine blisks
• Optimization of plastic-based layer manufacturing processes through the application of a knowledge-based system
• Studying the development of a methodology for system-technical modeling of metal injection molding processes
• Modular simulation system for the holistic optimization of metal-processing generative production processes
• Process optimization for the additive production of turbine parts
• Activated polymerization in 3-D printing
• ForLayer (https://www.forlayer.de/index.php?id=2&L=2)
• Optimization of generative production with electron beams for high-melting alloys