A total of twelve SMEs, large enterprises, and research institutes will be cooperating on the IDAM research project, which is to run until 2022. IDAM stands for ‘Industrialization and Digitization of Additive Manufacturing (AM) for Automotive Series Processes’. The aim of the project is to integrate metallic 3D printing in conventional production lines in the automotive industry. The move will enable the project partners to replace costly and time-consuming processes, such as mold production, and to meet the desire for product customization at no extra cost.

Metallic 3D printing is to be implemented at the BMW Group’s Additive Manufacturing Center in Munich and at automotive supplier GKN Powder Metallurgy’s factory in Bonn. There, the IDAM team will qualify the AM technology for the specific requirements for the production of identical, individual, and spare parts on the basis of specific components. In the future, it should be possible to leverage the virtually fully automated AM production lines to produce at least 50,000 components per year in mass production and over 10,000 individual and spare parts. Other partners in the project are the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, RWTH Aachen University, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the companies Aconity GmbH , Concept Reply GmbH , Myrenne GmbH , Intec GmbH , Kinexon Industries GmbH , Schmitz Spezialmaschinenbau GmbH , and Volkmann GmbH .