Lab for the Additive Manufacturing of Smart Materials for Medical Technology - AMSmartMed

• Subject Area: Materials in Sintering Processes and Generative Manufacturing Processes
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 533297153

With the present project, Offenburg University of Applied Sciences is pursuing the goal of combining its existing competences in the field of medical technology and materials engineering and further expanding them with regard to knowledge-oriented research. This goal is linked to fundamental interdisciplinary research questions for understanding the structure and manufacture of materials and their interaction with the biological and physical environment. The focus of the project is on a combination of so-called smart materials with the manufacturing technology tools of additive manufacturing. Smart materials are functional materials that undergo mechanical, structural or multiphysical property changes as a result of changes in their environmental conditions. Combining smart materials with additive manufacturing processes opens up new possibilities for producing customized components with unique properties. Smart materials can be integrated into printed materials to produce components that exhibit specific medical technology functions and response capabilities. This combination offers numerous advantages, particularly for medical technology with the requirement for complex customized components with small batch sizes, for example for the production of patient-specific implants, adaptive diagnostic devices and anatomical models for preoperative planning. To realize these research approaches, a laboratory is to be set up that will allow knowledge-oriented research into the additive manufacturing of smart materials maximum material diversity. The area of polymer-based materials will be covered by a pellet printer for 4D printing, which can be used in particular to manufacture new magnetically responsive plastics. For the investigation of metallic and ceramic materials, a combination of binder jetting printer and debinding and sintering furnace will be procured. In terms of material-independent research, this combination offers the advantage of a very wide range of materials, together with the advantage of very smooth surfaces and the extensive elimination of support structures. The furnace is designed in such a way that it can also be used to process highly filled polymers from the pellet printer into metallic components. Finally, the aim is to develop a dip-coating device that can be used to investigate and realize biocompatible surfaces in a targeted manner. With the people involved in the application, a new field of research is to be opened up in which new project ideas will lead to an application being submitted, thus creating future research at the interface between materials science, medical technology and medicine.

• DFG Programme: Major Instrumentation Initiatives
• Major Instrumentation: Binder Jetting Drucker ; Entbinderungs- und Sinterofen ; Pelletdrucker-3D-Drucker
• Instrumentation Group: 2110 Formen-, Modellherstellung und gießereitechnische Maschinen ; 8420 Spezielle Oefen (Induktions-, Lichtbogenheizung, Vakuumöfen)
• Applicant Institution: Hochschule Offenburg
• Leader: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Quadbeck
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Fabian Johannes Eber; Dr. Tobias Haber; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Marlene Harter; Professor Dr.-Ing. Stefan Junk; Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Seifert; Professor Dr.-Ing. Dirk Velten