E3D-Online Limited Public Funding

Accelerating Sustainable Additive Manufacturing Solutions

Additive Manufacturing (AM) machinery is currently designed, built and assembled using traditional manufacturing principles. Production requires complex supply chains and highly-skilled staff (PrototalUK, 2023) As this technology advances rapidly, machines quickly become redundant and contribute to the growing e-waste problem. Batch.Works and E3D are creating a cutting-edge solution for the design, manufacture and assembly of additive manufacturing machinery to reduce material use, waste and cost. In this project, Batch.Works intends to develop a new method for producing 3D printers that enables scalable, sustainable and efficient machines to be produced for local markets. leveraging the benefits of additive, digital production (no tooling, parts made on demand, no production waste, no warehousing costs, short supply chains, sustainable materials, fit for purpose components) the consortium will produce a machine that can easily be assembled, serviced and returned for refurbishment or recycling at the end of its life as part of an innovative circular manufacturing as a service business model. The project is in collaboration with E3D who are industry experts in the development of print head technology. E3D will develop a new print head (a key component of the machine) tuned to improve energy efficiency and assembly time. This will utilise a groundbreaking design produced with metal additive manufacturing technology. The outcome is a printer that offers more sustainable production and is also itself a groundbreaking piece of engineering, with 70% shorter production times, 70% less parts, and 85% less embodied C02E, produced with locally sourced sustainable materials.

High temperature, affordable polymer composites for AM aerospace applications

High performance mouldable plastics like PEEK/PEK and others in the polyaryletherketone family (PAEK), and their engineered composites are materials of the future and of particular interested to airframe makers as a metal replacement, being 40 -70% lighter than steel, titanium or aluminum. PAEK composites are also highly corrosion resistant, heat tolerant to 250oC+, don’t burn, and can compete mechanically. Additive Manufacture (AM) of PAEK polymers and composites is now possible, where if this production route could be matured and perfected, AM PAEK would be exploited far more extensively in future aircraft. Similarly to metals AM, which is now an established and indispensable tool in airframe design and manufacture, the usage of PAEKs would grow. This aim is to solve the well identified technical barriers hindering AM-PAEKs exploitation, and thereby make the process, reliable, cost competitive and a common-place fabrication route, available throughout the aerostructures supply chain. This initiative brings together the entire materials & processing supply chain, including polymer makers/suppliers through to parts manufacturers and post-processors as well as end-users.