Advanced Manufacturing for the European Space Industry: 2020 Programme Update

Advanced Manufacturing is a European Space Agency cross-cutting initiative which aims to capture new opportunities for manufacturing, materials, and related processes, thus creating a competitive advantage for the European Space Industry in the global market. The initiative has identified numerous activities which are aimed at revitalising the European industry leadership in advanced manufacturing for space applications. This is targeted at design freedom, performance improvement, cost reduction and lead time reduction (from concept to manufacturing).

Since the introduction of the programme in 2016, over 40 activities have been kicked-off within the European Space Industry. Areas of interest include materials processing, surface engineering, additive manufacturing, shaping, joining and bonding, and electronic assembly. Recently the programme has been extended to include Smart Manufacturing.

In this presentation an update will be provided on the progress on some of the key activities including; new forming technologies, additive manufacturing, novel ceramic and powder metallurgy materials, honeycombs and lattice structures, and high density PCB assemblies. It will also provide an update on the new domain of Smart Manufacturing which includes topics such as data acquisition, data manipulation, tool development and virtual testing.