EOS-led consortium to develop digitalised production line for automotive industry

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A consortium of 15 industrial and research organisations from German has received funding to develop a digitalised production line to produce plastic parts for the automotive industry.

POLYLINE is led by EOS, and will also see contributions from Fraunhofer, BMW Group and Grenzebach Maschinenbau GmbH, with an investment of €10.7m coming from the General Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The aim of the three-year project is to develop a production line that combines conventional manufacturing techniques, such as machining and casting, with additive manufacturing.  

This partnership between the 15 organisations, which include post-processing vendors, automation specialists, workflow software providers, measurement experts and additive manufacturing users, has come about as a result of the limited integration of additive manufacturing on conventional production lines. The POLYLINE consortium attributes this to a lack of standards across additive manufacturing process chains, the low level of automation of the physical handling and transport steps and the production times. Another factor is the digital data chain not being continuous, leading to a lack of transparency and a greater risk of errors.

Pooling their respective expertise, the partners will seek to automate sub-processes, from preparation to unpacking of the selective laser sintering powder cake and post-processing and implement a system which records and documental all central characteristic values and quality criteria. The resulting digitalised production line will be developed in accordance with the requirements of the application partner, BMW, with use cases set to include customised components and serial parts produced in large quantities.  

The full list of companies involved with POLYLINE is as follows:

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