POLYFORCE

General information

SBO project
Started: 01/07/2013, Duration: 48 months
Status: Ended
Program: STREAM
Project contact: Peter Van Puyvelde (KULeuven)

Consortium

Industry: MaterialiseSolvay

Knowledge institutions: KU LeuvenUGent

The main objective of the Polyforce SBO project is to identify new polymers suitable for shaping using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS): 95% of all SLS parts are currently manufactured from polyamide 12 (PA12).

The project has three milestones that serve as a guide to increase the development speed of new polymeric products for SLS:

  • Establishment of a screening methodology to judge whether a given polymer is amenable to SLS processing
  • Production of new polymer powders suitable for SLS processing, including a strategy to recycle the unsintered powder.
  • Development of a robust SLS protocol to process the newly developed powders to achieve high quality parts.

This project is part of:

STRuctural Engineering materials (metals, plastics, composites) processed by means of additive manufacturing (AM) result in light weight parts with a high freedom of design, complex geometries and customer specific features. The AM-process performance is determined by the printing material properties, the printing parameters and the supporting monitoring and simulating software tools.

General information

Started: 01/12/2013
Theme: Durable & Sustainable Structural Materials
Program manager: Tom Craeghs (Materialise)