WAVETAILOR focuses two industrial scenarios which are related to the complex multi-material component and assembly. The first one is Directed Energy Deposition of a multimaterial leading edge for a hypersonic hydrogen-driven airplane, while the second relates to the Powder Bed Fusion of complex multi-material assembly of a drone for urban delivery. The challenges in both cases are related with zero-defect manufacturing, sustainability and first-time-right manufacturing. WAVETAILOR aims to solve the high-precision in complex material structure manufacturing, the disassembly, reuse and recycling of components, while reducing the environmental footprint of both manufacturing process and the components itself. To achieve this, three main pillars are developed in the project: 1) flexible energy efficient photonic setup based on modular diode-based laser source and multi-wavelength optics; 2) full reconfigurability of this setup, to use minimal energy and material resources in manufacturing of two use cases and 3) ZDM and ZDW strategies at assembly level controlling the compliability of complex multimaterial products at machine level, shop floor level and delocalized manufacturing chain level. The latter pillar will be based on digital sibling (shop floor level) and twin (cloud level) for automatic assessment of component/assembly design for circularity; first-time right process planning using synthetic legacy data and ZDM/ZDW based on real time process and post-process monitoring. When the WAVETAILOR objectives are achieved, the manufacturing process of the two use cases will have spent 200MWh of energy less, 923kg of waste less, while the production costs are going to be 50-65% lower. In order to prove this a dedicated sustainability study is provided along the project.

Making Europe the first digitally led circular, climate-neutral and sustainable economy needs major changes across manufacturing: efficiencies in energy and material consumption, new solutions to problems in certification and standardisation, and upskilling of the European workforce. DILAPRO contributes to all of these, driving decarbonisation and the twin Green and Digital Transitions via two ground-breaking software tools for laser-based production of complex products. DILAFACT (Digital Laser Factory) is a sustainable and scalable platform for laser process planning via Digital Twins of laser-material interactions, including additive, subtractive, and thermal processes. DILACERT (Digital Laser Certification) tackles a major hurdle in rapidly-developing laser and additive manufacturing technologies: certification and standardisation. In the short DILACERT enables end users to easily process production data for certification; in the long term it paves the way for remote semiautomated digital certification of produced parts, a major paradigm shift in complex part production. DILAPRO grounds its development in specific materials (316L, IN718, IN625) and laser technologies (PBF-LB, DED-LB, and Laser Texturing) as deployed on 6 operational production lines owned by project partners. These will be developed as distinct modules during the first half of the project, and synthesised into DILAFACT and DILACERT in the project’s second half. To ensure the competitiveness and sustainability of European manufacturing in the long term, other developers and end-users will be able to contribute modules to both software, kick-started by DILAPRO’s living communities and innovative IP plan covering both commercial and OA licenses. DILAPRO offers two scalable, sustainability-focused solutions for the European laser-based, high-precision manufacturing industry, and will thus not simply develop a single one-off product, but a resilient force-multiplier for the long term.

WISE sets a new frontier for product complexity by shifting the focus from geometry to functionality, introducing features such as self-healing, triggered biomolecule diffusion, and smart repairing. This disruption redefines current design methodology, leveraging advanced AI-aided engineering and multi-scale, multi-process manufacturing to achieve unprecedented complexity. WISE has the potential to drive a discontinuity in the growth of the European industry by convincingly demonstrating an innovative, competitive, and scalable manufacturing concept based on a single machine that integrates macroscale processing (i.e., DED via hybrid blue-IR lasers) and micro-nano scale processing (i.e., fs and ns laser ablation, 2PP, DALP). WISE will deliver a TRL7 multi-process machine integrating high-precision, multi-scale techniques for producing complex multifunctional products. The project will demonstrate the machine's performance, flexibility, and precision by producing three complex hybrid products in MedTech, Aerospace, and Power generation sectors. The project builds upon TRL5-validated results from previous H2020 projects, which have brought significant innovations in the field of advanced manufacturing and enabling technologies. The work plan includes a final demonstration to validate the solution through the production of complex components based on end-user requirements. Upon completion, WISE will be further developed to reach TRL9 within 24 months, leading to its commercial launch as a multi-process manufacturing station. The WISE consortium is composed of 16 partners, including 8 SMEs, 4 LE, and 4 RTD. Their expertise covers mechatronics, intelligent nanostructured components, laser-material interaction, high-precision machines and tools. The project partners form a cluster of European countries playing crucial roles in the production of functionalized products with smart functionalities, adaptive photonic solutions, and advanced mechatronic systems.

Global economic crises and the COVID19 pandemic have dictated manufacturing firms to rethink their production and business models. Production systems need to adopt both human and automated resources that can work together seamlessly. As a response, CONVERGING aims to Develop, deploy, validate and promote smart and reconfigurable production systems including multiple autonomous agents (collaborative robots, AGVs, humans) that are able to act in diverse production environments. The diversifying factors will be a multi-level AI based cognition (line, station, resource levels) which will exploit the collective perception (Digital Pipeline) of these resources, allowing them to interact with each other and seamlessly coexist with humans under a "social industrial environment" that ensures trustful, safe and inclusive user experience The project proposes the development of systems that can: 1. Perceive: Identify and recognize processes/resources/environment and their status by introducing Big Data, Real Time Integration & Communication Architecture, Digital Twins and Human in the Loop techniques 2. Reason: Analyze the production system status and autonomously formulate plan of actions using AI, Planning and Reconfiguration Algorithms as well as Resource Autonomy solutions 3. Adapt: Automatically modify h/w and control systems to execute the formulated plans through the use of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Smart Devices and Adaptable Mechatronics 4. Collaborate: Seamlessly work with humans or other resources establishing a social industrial environment which exploits Smart Human Machine Collaboration, User experience assessment and User centric workplace design 5. Innovate: Expand its capabilities and Openness via an Open Pilot Network as well as links to local and international innovation ecosystems CONVERGING will demonstrate its results in the Automotive, Aircraft Production, White Goods and Additive Manufacturing products processing sectors.

Thanks to emerging materials and digital technologies, the product design space is larger than ever. Despite this, EU manufacturers are struggling to innovate, with traditional tools presenting a major bottleneck. Existing machining tools were designed for a more stable world, when a single process flow would remain unchanged for years. To increase competitiveness and respond to new opportunities, the manufacturing industry now needs customisable tools, applicable to multiple processes, and rapidly reconfigurable in response to changing needs. FLASH is an industry driven project, led by global manufacturing leader PRIMA and supported by 6 large enterprises, 6 innovative SMEs, 2 Universities, 2 RTOs, and a manufacturing association, EWF, that represents >55k companies globally. FLASH will leverage the benefits of laser-based manufacturing, which is more flexible, more amenable to digital control, and generates less waste than traditional mechanical/chemical/thermal processes. Whilst state of the art laser-based machines are optimised for a single application, FLASH will develop a flexible platform with three built-in laser sources, allowing multi-wavelength emission, over a broad pulse length regime with dynamic beam shaping, in a flexible robotic/CNC cell with three different beam delivery heads. The result will be a futureproof system capable of at least 10 macro and micro production processes over all major material types, designed to enable flexible and customisable manufacturing of rapidly evolving products for a range of industries. The benefits of FLASH will be industrially demonstrated in the automotive (car cross beam), medical (hip implant), e-mobility (electric motor hairpins) and tooling (micro drills, super abrasive grinding wheels) industries, where significant process-time, -cost and -energy savings are expected, alongside unlocking product benefits through design modifications and material substitutions not possible using existing technologies.