Specific Challenge:
Miniaturisation leads to new functionalities, weight reduction and energy and material saving. European industry has currently a leading position in this field, but investments in research and development of new micro-manufacturing techniques are necessary to maintain this advantage. European industry has the technology to produce and assemble micro-scale objects (i.e. objects with a total volume < 1 mm3 and with the smallest dimension between 10µm and 300µm). However, further efforts are needed to combine accuracy, speed, productivity, efficiency and reliability. New production lines must be able to detect and adapt with minimum human involvement to variations in the environment or of the components. Manufacturing technologies used for larger parts cannot be directly applied to micro part assembly because physical phenomena that can be ignored at larger scale may strongly affect micro systems. Models of micro systems assembly processes are needed that take these effects into account.
Scope:The proposal should focus on new assembly technologies, such as additive manufacturing, especially for products, that contain micro-parts and which are assembled manually for most of the part because of technical limitations. For this purpose, proposals should cover at least three of the following areas:
Proposals should include pilots where industrial end-users will validate the demonstrated processes. The proposed solutions should respect the environment and workers, be economically viable and easily transferable to other sectors or product types.
Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the Introduction to the LEIT part of this Work Programme.
Activities should start at TRL 4 and achieve TRL 6 at the end of the project.
The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 8 and 10 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.
Expected Impact:The developed manufacturing process should deliver all of the following:
Relevant indicators and metrics, with baseline values, should be clearly stated in the proposal.
Cross-cutting Priorities: