The AM 4 Industry project was launched by the ecoplus plastics cluster , a cross-industry plastics sector network and the ecoplus mechatronics cluster in 2017. Eight research partners and fifty-one companies from Austria, Germany and Belgium worked for two years on concepts for the successful industrial application of additive manufacturing processes. They have now presented their results on the project website.

A total of five reports were published. “Error Catalog LBM-Additive Manufacturing” (LBM = laser beam melting) deals with possible process deviations during the LBM process and the resulting component errors; the “Design for Additive Manufacturing” e-book explains 3D printing methodology; the “Design in Additive Manufacturing” document looks at the functionality of the various AM devices and the respective design rules. While the fourth report deals with quality optimization and cost analyses in additive manufacturing, the fifth document presents the open source software OpenFoam, which can be used to simulate and solve flow problems.