Gen6 Gas Atomiser is a state-of-the-art metal powder processing plant specialising in manufacturing stainless steel powders. It is designed to be a fully integrated powder production plant utilising continuous melting, atomising, powder classifying and sieving processes, making it the first of its kind in the world. The plant reduces energy consumption significantly compared to traditional total gas loss atomisers by recycling the atomising gas and utilising waste heat from the compression stage of the gas recycling circuit. Additionally, the plant minimises the need for manual labour, thus reducing labour costs. Going from a typical batch based gas atomising plant to a continuous process the Gen6 technology will achieve a 200-300% increase in output per atomising line.

Nature uses foam or sponge-like structures in various organisms for purposes like shock absorption, noise reduction, and vibration compensation in a remarkable example of evolutionary adaptation and functional design. On the other hand, many products still rely on non-sustainable materials of fossil-based origin, for example foams and elastomeric used for vibratory motion, sound, harshness, energy, and shock-impact absorption in industries such as automotive, aerospace and marine. Example of such Noise Vibration and Harshness (NVH) materials are rubber and engineering resins. Bio.3DGREEN develops and demonstrates a novel manufacturing approach for a cost-effective bio-inspired platform of bio-based components based on graphene foam (GF) to meet the industrial needs, i.e. vibration, sound and shock-impact absorption and durability in extreme conditions. Bio.3DGREEN democratizes graphene technology and enables the unscalable fabrication of graphene-based components of complex geometries to be demonstrated at TRL 6 through a high throughput, laser-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) procedure. The procedure is bio-inspired, mimicking structures such as the human bone, and is based solely on bio-based graphene system with vegetable oil as the raw material, resulting in carbon-positive manufacturing of the new components. Bio.3DGREEN demonstrates the superior bio-based GF parts in four different industries, aiming to drive the optimization of the new manufacturing approach through an application-driven approach: Automotive suspension systems & isolation panels, aerospace applications and quiet shipping. Bio.3DGREEN achieves a multi-disciplinary approach to develop, optimize, and improve smart manufacturing application-driven, bio-based GF components, also considering the performance of current materials used, their cost, market size, wastage and recyclability, sustainability of manufacturing process, inclusion in Europe’s circular economy and LCA, LCC aspects.

The total EU electronics industry employs ≈20.5 million people, sales exceeding €1 trillion and includes 396,000 SMEs. It is a major contributor to EU GDP and its size continues to grow fueled by demand from consumers to many industries. Despite its many positive impacts, the industry also faces some challenges connected with the enormous quantity of raw materials that it needs for sustainability, the huge quantity of Waste Electrical, Electronics Equipment (WEEE) generated and the threat of competition from Asia. To sustain its growth, to manage the impact of WEEE and to face the competition from Asia, the industry needs innovations in key areas. One such area is the drive for ultra-miniaturisation/ultlra-functionality of equipment. The key current road block/limitation to achieving the goal of ultra-miniaturisation/functionality is how to increase the component density on the printed circuit board (PCB). This is currently limited by the availability of hyper fine pitch solder powder pastes. FineSol aims to deliver at first stage an integrated production line for solder particles with size 1-10 μm and to formulate solder pastes containing these particles. Thus, by proper printing methods (e.g. screen and jet printing) the fabrication of PCBs with more than double component density will be achieved. Consequently, this would effectively enable more than a doubling of the functions available on electronic devices such as cell phones, satellite navigation systems, health devices etc. The successful completion of the FineSol project would lift the ultra-miniaturisation/functionality road block and also enable reduction in raw material usage, reduction in WEEE, reduction in pollution and associated health costs and also a major reduction in EU energy demand with all its indirect benefits for environment and society.

SUPREME aims at optimizing powder metallurgy processes throughout the supply chain. It will focus on a combination of fast-growing industrial production routes and advanced ferrous and non-ferrous metals. By offering more integrated, flexible and sustainable processes for powders manufacturing and metallic parts fabrication, SUPREME enables the reduction of the raw material resources (minerals, metal powder, gas and water) losses while improving energy efficiency, production rate and CO2 emissions, into sustainable processes and towards a circular economy. To achieve this goal, an ambitious cross-sectorial integration and optimization has been designed between several powder metallurgy processes: gas and water atomization as well as ball milling for metal powder production, additive manufacturing and near-net shape technologies for end-parts fabrication. Quality and process control will be developed to monitor KPI, based on eco-innovation approach, to demonstrate the optimization of material and energy use. 4 demonstrators will be proposed at each step of the value chain in real industrial setting and ready for business exploitation at TRL 7: mineral concentration, metal powder manufacturing, metal part manufacturing and end-product that will validate a global optimization of more than 25% on material yield losses, more than 10% on energy efficiency, more than 10% on production rate and beyond 30% of CO2 emissions. SUPREME has gathered an outstanding consortium of 17 partners from 8 countries, represented by 11 companies including 6 SMEs that will ensure a successful implementation towards market applications. 5 applications sectors are targeted: automotive, aeronautics, cutting tools, molding tools and medical. The process key differentiation advantages will bring modularity, flexibility and sustainability to powder metallurgy and will reduce the total cost breakdown of these technologies, boosting their adoption by industry.