Smart Production and Additive Manufacturing - IMA intervenes at SPS Italia (Milan)

IMA attends the round table “Smart Production: Additive Manufacturing as enabling technology for Industry 4.0” hosted by SPS Italia on January 30 in Milan (Aula Carassa Dadda, Politecnico di Milano, Bovisa). The event will consider the role of AM as Industry 4.0 technology and complementary to other digital solutions at the service of intelligent production. Several sectors addressed, including that of packaging, during the day dedicated to the round table. 

Filippo Rosa, Research and Innovation Engineer IMA Group, will share the IMA experience on the topic, speaking during the “Additive Manufacturing and Packaging” session (Thursday 30/01 – 12:15).

The round table will be the opportunity to explore the technological progress achieved by the Group in the Additive Manufacturing use. Several potentials deriving from Additive Manufacturing have guided IMA in the careful evaluation and adoption of different technologies. Among these, the development of a hybrid machine tool, with the possibility of direct deposition of metal powders, created as part of the IMA Digital Manufacturing project, was particularly important. In the development of new additive applications, the Group is also making use of generative design: technology that, exploiting a mathematical model developed by artificial intelligence and integrating both geometric and technological, generates a series of designs optimized for specific technologies.

One of the last steps forward in AM has seen the implementation of Artificial Intelligence: IMA has long invested in this new direction through Inkbit, a startup born from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of MIT in Cambridge. Among the technologies developed by the companies there is a 3D printer that uses Machine Learning techniques to correct printing errors in real time, guaranteeing the geometry of the finished product.

With the tuning of new materials and processes for the creation of parts for production, Additive Manufacturing has also attracted great attention, in particular for its approach oriented towards sustainability: new technologies, precisely because of their properties additive and non-subtractive, allow to reduce to a minimum the quantity of waste produced with a consequent greater respect for environmental eco-sustainability, which has always been at the center of the IMA Group’s policies.

Additive Manufacturing is part of the IMA Digital projects, the Group’s global initiative launched in 2017 which aims to create the IMA Smart Factory and provide partners and customers with advanced products at the service of production.

Explore Addivite Manufacturing and IMA Smart Factory here »