REFURBISHMENT AND ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ACCOMPLISHED BY KINETIC DEPOSITION

Ambitious goals of the European Green Deal call for new sustainable and material-efficient manufacturing technologies that can reduce energy and raw material consumption; this objective can be upheld by extending the product life via optimized production methods, recovering product performance through refurbishing, and even improving its functions beyond design by remanufacturing. These are the overarching objectives of RE-MAKE that considers cold spray (CS), a solid-state metal powder deposition technique, as the key for a new route to additive manufacturing (AM), repair and remanufacturing. Thanks to its exceptional deposition efficiency, high build-up rate, limited energy consumption, and flexibility of material choice, CS is an ideal candidate for the EU Circular Economy Action Plan. However, currently, there are multiple scientific and industrial gaps, paired with poor awareness about CS’s potential due to the lack of qualified engineers and scientists, that impede the full exploitation of CS.

RE-MAKE is planned to establish CS as a unique sustainable and scalable tool for AM, remanufacturing and upcycling, paving the path to a green and efficient sustainable industrial development. This ambitious goal will be achieved by training highly qualified doctoral candidates (DCs) through advanced transversal and inter-sectoral training. The wide-ranging hard and soft skills the DCs will gain enable them to embark on tackling scientific and technological challenges with a practical perspective. Creating a network of leading European research and industrial partners, all working at the cutting edge of CS, will expose DCs to a holistic training with access to a wealth of expertise and a rare multidisciplinary environment. RE-MAKE will endow a first cohort of these essential researchers with a deep, discipline-specific knowledge, that will fulfil the increasing demand of the manufacturing industry for this missing profile.