In the frame of the Interreg IPA South Adriatic cross-border cooperation Programme, IMAST, as lead partner of the AMTECH project, organizes the Opening Conference “Industrial 3D-printing: challenges and opportunities in the IPA area”.
The event will be held on July 2nd, 2024 at Polytechnic University of Bari “Sala Videoconferenze” - Rettorato, located at Via Amendola n. 126/b – Bari.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) represents a key enabling technology that in the last years has gained considerable interest both from Industry and Academia. Many reasons are behind the success of AM, including, and not limited to, the possibility of rapid prototyping, product customization and waste minimization. AM on the one hand offers a seamless transition from the design to the manufacturing, allowing fast and cost-effective design changes; while on the other hand by requiring lower capital costs with respect to traditional production processes, AM has the potential to lower the market entrance barriers of new products, a critical factor for SMEs.
Stated that, the main reason behind the conceptualization of AMTECH project relies on the need to raise the technological level and R&D of manufacturing companies of the Programme Area, in order to create a cross-border technology district between Italy, Montenegro and Albania.
More in detail, AMTECH project is aimed to guarantee access to knowledge, engineering skills and production capacity to local SMEs and supply chain. Therefore, the main outcome of the project will be the development of a joint action plan indicating the directions to follow in order increase the competitiveness on the AM technologies of the SMEs of the Programme Area at European level.
With regard to the workshop, the first part deals with the presentation of the AMTECH project, as capitalization of the R&D AMICO (‘Additive manufacturing and Process Automation for Hybrid and Composite Materials” - PON ARS01_ 00758) Project, coordinated by IMAST, and the relative positioning with respect to European strategy on Additive Manufacturing technologies. Within this context, main outcomes to be capitalized will presented by experts from aeronautical, automotive, defence and pharmaceutical/biomedical sector. Afterwards, an outlook on the integration of AM technologies in the regional policies of the Programme Area will be provided. The last part of the workshop will foresee the intervention of experts from industry and academic institutions aimed to present an overview on additive technologies and potential applications also in traditional sectors.
The project “AMTECH/No. SA-0100202” is co-financed by the European Union under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA III) Interreg IPA South Adriatic 2021/2027.
The project partners are: IMAST – High Tech District on engineering of polymeric and composite materials and structures (IT); Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre Tehnopolis (MNE); Pro-Eksport Albania (AL); Sviluppo Italia Molise (IT).