The AILEEN project seeks to address the skills shortage in the Aerospace and Defence (A&D) sector by establishing Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) across seven European countries. These centres will focus on advanced manufacturing areas like welding, brazing, additive manufacturing, and inspection technologies. The CoVEs will form a network of educational, research, and industrial organizations, fostering collaboration to meet industry skill needs.

Key objectives include specialized training, maintaining high-quality education, promoting flexible practices, and ongoing cooperation with A&D companies. The plan outlines creating a sustainable framework for CoVEs, with milestones such as defining training frameworks, continuous identification of best practices, and a recognition process for CoVEs.

The CoVEs must involve collaboration between training organizations, research centers, and industry partners, ensuring alignment with industry needs. Initial implementation covers eight CoVEs in Belgium, the UK, Turkey, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and Portugal, with further expansion plans. The project aims to support innovation, growth, and competitiveness in the A&D industry.

Read the full report Strategic Plan for Advanced manufacturing Aerospace & Defence CoVEs

The Innovative Advanced Materials initiative ( IAM-I) invites you to the IAM-I Day that will take place on November 19^th from 14H to 18:30H in Brussels at BluePoint (Address: Blvd Auguste Reyers 80, 1030 Brussels, Belgium). The session aims to share the status and next steps of the partnership on materials association. For that, we will count on the participation of the European Commission, among other stakeholders.

Tentative agenda:

• 14:00H - 14:30H - Welcome coffee
• 14:30H - 16:30H - IAM-I workshop
• 16:30H - 18:30H - Networking drinks

Registration (physically & remotely) is available here.

• Global AM-Enabling Laser Powder Bed Fusion for Large Scale Production of Multi-Material Components
• Project Duration: 3 years- strat date: January 1st  2024
• Website: https://www.globalam-project.eu/
• Summary:
  While laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) inherently allows the production of complex geometries it isn’t yet introduced to mass markets due to prohibitive cycle times and uncompetitive product precision and quality. A hybrid production where complex components using LPBF’s flexibility are built on top of conventionally manufactured substrates at near-net-shape geometry can speed up the production process dramatically, especially if applied to small component volumes. GlobalAM aims to advance and combine existing state-of-the-art approaches, namely beam shaping, beam splitting, in-situ geometry correction, and process monitoring + control in an advanced machine concept that allows fixation of multiple substrates and laser beam positioning to produce components on a large scale. As a demonstrator, a cooling device for power electronics is chosen because it combines typical challenges in a prototypic way: complex metal geometries made from challenging materials such as copper are built on a ceramic-based substrate with a required precision in the low micrometer scale. If the technological barriers towards the demonstrator can be solved, GlobalAM will introduce – but not limit – LPBF to the multi-billion-euro mass market of power electronics with highly attractive technological, economical, and environmental benefits. To make this project successful, experts from renowned universities and world-leading companies in the disciplines of production technology, laser systems, process development/monitoring/control, and modeling, as well as powder production for advanced multi-material powders, join their efforts in close multi-national cooperation.