Dear [NAME],

First of  all I want to wish you a Healty and Happy New Year to you all! Especially in these turbulent moment of time we all need to keep up the good work as before!
As far as Rapid Manufacturing is concerned, we have some news which we would like to share with you:

A successful EUROMOLD 2008 was held where many new developments were shown: new machines in the area of larger RM machines as well as towards the smaller scale: table top size. Also better materials (high temperature) and improved speed were demonstrated. The direction towards actual Rapid Manufacturing is continuing at high speed!

We have attended an ASTM meeting setting up standards for RM, a very urgent issue for industrial take-up of our technology! An action has started in the area of standardisation and quality, which so far was still lacking for Rapid Manufacturing and is an indispensable issue for industrial take up of Rapid Manufacturing. Please find announcements on this further here on the website.

The MANUFUTURE2008 Conference in St. Étienne, 8th December 2008 (see www.manufuture.org) announced that a JTI Task Force on manufacturing should be established where Enabling Technologies for "Factories of the Future" should be promoted and supported by combined public-private-and national funding. The RM Platform was invited to contribute to this initiative and is currently working on that.

Approved FP7 proposals Compolight (Teknologisk) and Impala (TWI) have recently had their Kick Off meetings and are getting momentum now. Directspare (Materialise) will start February 1st. All projects will report on their progress in later newsletters as well.

Some news on future calls on RM: the European Commission will under the Cooperation Work Programme NMP, present an opportunity to submit dedicated RM proposals early 2010 at the first occasion. Hence it is recommended to investigate other funding resources as well.

To prepare for future calls, the RM Platform together with the European Commission will organise a Brokerage event in Brussels on 2nd to discuss and align initiatives and plans. More announcements on this will follow in due time.

We hope to see you all in June in Brussels (or earlier on other occasions) for what will be an interesting day for Rapid Manufacturing.

If you would prefer not to receive this email in the future you can unsubscribe using the link at the bottom of the email.


Best regards,

The platform management team.

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Upcoming events for 2009

2009-06-12: 10th RDPM, High Wycombe 

10th National Conference on Rapid Design, Prototyping & Manufacture.

This year, the annual conference will be hosted by Buckinghamshire New University. It is a one day event jointly organised with the Lancaster Product Development Unit, Department of Engineering, Lancaster University.

Download Call for papers here

Abstracts are now being invited for this National Conference. These should contain 300 to 500 words of text and be accompanied by a suitable title and the names and afflictions of the authors.

Deadline for submission of the abstracts is Friday, 16th January 2009

Please send your submission to Mr. Mike Hacking

2009-05-25/27; DRP 2009, Mysore, India

World Conference on Digital & Rapid Prototyping: Research & ApplicationsDates: 25-27 May 2009 & Venue: Mysore, India

Rapid Prototyping Society of India (RPSI) in conjunction with several international bodies is organising an international conference on Digital & Rapid Prototyping Technologies – DRP 2009 with focus on the following topics:

* Rapid Prototyping (RP) and Rapid Manufacturing (RM) technologies

* CAD, Virtual Prototyping and Internet based product development

* RP and RM Materials – Metals / Non-metals / FGM / Composites / Bio & Micro Materials

* RP and Product Design – Concurrent Design & Manufacturing

* 3D digitising, reverse engineering and image based modelling techniques

* Applications: Aerospace / Automotive / Biomedical / Consumer Goods / Tooling

2008-03-10, 2008-03-31 and 2008-04-21: TNO create Rapid Manufacturing workshop, Eindhoven, Netherlands

The workshop allows participants to become familiar with RM in a practical way, and participants can even bring in cases from their own company. In consultation, samples of products are manufactured using various RM techniques so that the participants have an opportunity to experience the possibilities of the techniques themselves.
Download leaflet here.(Dutch)

 

Articles / Publications

DTI, In the future everything could be produced in the kitchen at home.

Jacob Benthien, DTI, Focus, Danmark

The day when physical manufacuring of items or components is carried out by consumers themselves is just round the corner.

CUSTOM-FIT Newsletter 04

AIJU Technology Center, Dr. Luisa Marín and Dr. Asunción Martínez Asociación de Investigación de la Industria del Juguete, Conexas y Afines, Spain

Custom-Fit is an industry led project to investigate the possibility of moving towards knowledge based manufacturing and customised production through integration of knowledge in RM, IST and Material Science. Funded under FP6, the project involves 28 partners from 12 countries. This newsletter brings you the latest developments.

This newsletter will introduce you to the process of Helmet Customisation and a rapid manufacturing procedure, which uses a high viscosity powder material, being developed by TNO in the Netherlands.
We have also included the decisions made last 23rd of November by the Competitiveness Council of the European Union concerning the Joint Technology Initiatives that have been budgeted for.
As always, we will finish with information about the upcoming events.