On 5 July of 2018, the face-to-face regular meeting of the FASTEN – “Flexible and Autonomous Manufacturing Systems for Custom-Designed Products” took place at Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. Its main goal was to assess the development of work and to establish the future guidelines for the project execution, as well as to promote the integration of the teams and the interdisciplinary technologies involved.
The FASTEN project aims to develop, demonstrate and validate an additive manufacturing system connected in units of custom production with low unit cost. Throughout the three years of the project, a scalable, modular and standalone manufacturing system will be developed for the production of products with a personalised design; it will also be developed a unified and industrial open source IoT (Internet of Things) platform for manufacturing execution and product customisation services; as well as a data analysis application for predictive and prescriptive analysis of machine performance and customer service for digital manufacturing.
The goal is to increase the ability of companies to produce small batches or unique parts in order to meet the needs of highly customised products using additive manufacturing techniques (such as 3D printing or laser sintering). The pilots will be executed in the environments of the aeronautical and metal working industry. These features of the FASTEN structure will adequately support the operational and strategic goals of industrial companies that incorporate the Industry 4.0 concept.
FASTEN, which was led by INESC TEC and had the participation of INESC P&D Brasil, is executed in cooperation between Brazil and Europe. The resources come from the IV Call Europe Brazil (European Commission and Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications of Brazil) and are managed in Brazil by the National Network on Teaching and Research (RNP).
The Brazilian team includes the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), the Thyssenkrupp Brazil, the Embraer Brazil and the Bradel Distribuição Ltda, under the leadership of INESC P&D Brasil. The European side of the team involves the Politecnico di Milano (PoliMi), the PACE Aerospace Engineering and Information Technology GmbH, the Consorzio Intellimech (iMech) and the Embraer Portugal, under the leadership of INESC TEC.