The vision of TINKER is to provide a new cost- and resource efficient pathway for RADAR and LIDAR sensor package fabrication with high throughput up to 250units/min, improved automation by 20%, improved accuracy by 50% and reliability by a factor of 100 to the European automotive and microelectronic industry via additive manufacturing and inline feedback control mechanisms. Autonomous driving and self-driving cars represent one prominent example for the use of microelectronics and sensor, most importantly RADAR and LIDAR sensors. Their respective markets have a big potential, e.g. it is estimated that the market size of LIDAR in automotive will double itself in the next two years (within 2020 to 2022). The public awareness and the industrial need for further miniaturization of such sensor packages is the main driver of ongoing efforts in the automotive sector to be able to integrate such devices into the car body like in the bumps and head lamps instead of attaching them (e.g. on top of the car in case of LIDAR device). Safety (for the driver and others) is the most important key aspect of the automotive sector. Therefore highly-value and high performance RADAR and LIDAR systems are required for advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) as well as robotic cars. Current bottlenecks are relevantly large size of such sensor devices, their weight and power consumption. Since these factors are highly limited within cars, further miniaturization and improving functionality and efficient use of resources is highly demanded.

The here proposed DIMAP project focuses on the development of novel ink materials for 3D multi-material printing by PolyJet technology. We will advance the state-of-the art of AM through modifications of their fundamental material properties by mainly using nanoscale material enhanced inks. This widens the range of current available AM materials and implements functionalities in final objects. Therefore applications will not be limited to rapid prototyping but can be used directly in production processes. DIMAP will show this transition in two selected application fields: the production soft robotic arms/joints and customized luminaires. In order to cope with these new material classes the existing PolyJet technology is further developed and therefore improved. The DIMAP project targets at the following objectives: additive manufactured joints, additive manufactured luminaires, ceramic enhanced materials, electrically conducting materials, light-weight polymeric materials, high-strength polymeric materials, novel multi-material 3D-printer and safe by design. With the development of novel ink materials based on nanotechnology improvement of the mechanical properties (ceramic enhanced and high-strength polymeric inks), the electrical conductivity (metal enhanced inks) and the weightiness (light weight polymeric materials) are achieved. Based on the voxel printing by PolyJet these new materials lead to a huge broadening of the range of available digital material combinations. Further focus points during the material and printer development are safe by design approaches, work place safety, risk assessment, collaboration with EU safety cluster and life cycle assessment. An established roadmap at the end of project enables the identification of future development needs in related fields order to allow Europe also in the future to compete at the forefront of the additive manufacturing revolution.

Improving the life quality of Europe’s increasingly elderly population is one of the most pressing challenges our society faces today. The need to treat age-related degenerative changes in e.g. articular joints or dental implants will boost the market opportunities for tissue regeneration products like biological scaffolds. State of the art 3D printing technologies can provide biocompatible implants with the right macroscopic shape to fit a patient-specific tissue defect. However, for a real functionality, there is a need for new biomaterials, technologies and processes that additionally allow the fabrication of a scaffold microstructure that induces tissue-specific regeneration. It is not possible to address the complexity in structure and properties of human tissues with a single material or fabrication technique. Besides, there are many types of tissue in the human body, each with their own internal structures and functions. INKplant vision is the fusion/combination of different biomaterials (6 different inks), high-resolution, high throughput additive manufacturing technologies already proved for industrial processes (ceramic sterolithography and 3D multimaterial inkjet printing), and advanced simulation and biological evaluation, to bring a new concept for the design and fabrication of biomimetic scaffolds (3D printed patient specific resorbable cell-free implants) which can address the complexity of the different tissue in the human body, demonstrated for 2 Use Cases. For a successful future translation, INKplant will consider all the relevant clinical adoption criteria already at the beginning of the development process. To address INKplant challenging objective the consortium includes the best expertise from the main areas of relevance to the project: biomaterials, 3D printing technology, tissue engineering, regulatory bodies and social humanities.