Public Funding for 3D Systems Europe Limited

MEGCAP will re-invent the thermal management of the interior of aircraft starter-generator electrical machines. Project outputs will be equipment and products with higher efficiency, lower self-heating – leading to cooler and smaller equipment. The project will also advance the control electronics. Safran will conduct the R&T work jointly with UK based supply chain partners. Ferranti already undertake build to print work for Safran on flight standard electrical controls. Barden manufacture many of Safran’s specialised rolling element bearing for electrical machines. TE Connectivity supply electrical interconnects for data and power. All of these areas – and some that are technologically adjacent – will be addressed by the MEGCAP partnership. Two suppliers new to aerospace will use the advanced technologies they work on develop their future business. Both specialists in Additive Manufacturing (AM), 3T and CRDM – will undertake work on new materials and on the manufacture of conventional materials in novel new shapes. MEGCAP will deliver a strong and distinct cluster of technological capability in the supply chain for both electrical machines and their electrical controls.

The objective of this 2.5 yr long project is to demonstrate the clear competitive advantages of the use of Additive Layer Manufacturing (sometimes known as 3D Printing) in the manufacture of production metal and polyamide components. The project will demonstrate that ALM is now a reliable and potent production technology which can be included in the gamut of standard manufacturing techniques. This will be done by addressing three key issues, those of ALM component error correction, the automatic finishing of ALM components to acceptable standards, and the generation of ALM Production Part Acceptance Procedures for the industries involved, as well as process control plans and design guides for parts. The project will be led by CRDM Ltd, with McLaren Automotive, Delcam, Selex, Ultra Electronics and Flitetec as its partners. This strong consortium will ensure that the validated ALM techniques will be robust, exploitable and disseminated widely.

This project will inspire new design freedoms for Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM), in particular Selective Laser Melting (SLM), to create advanced lightweight structures and products. A major constraint of MAM is the requirement of support structures for building overhanging geometries. This will be overcome by an innovative CAD/CAM solution which utilises smart “self-support” low-density lattice structures (down to 5% volume fraction) to efficiently support internal and external overhanging geometries of lightweight products. Furthermore, an end-to-end manufacturing simulation and rehearsal tool will be developed to predict the manufacturability and performance of lightweight products and stimulate design freedom and optimisation which can reduce material and production costs for MAM. The aim of this project is to enable the UK automotive, aerospace and engineering sectors to more effectively exploit MAM technologies.