Press & Media

Even in the “Corona Year” the international toolmaking industry does not give in and proves to be resilient to the crisis: Harting Applied Technologies GmbH from Espelkamp in Westphalia, Germany, won the “Excellence in Production” award this year and is thus awarded the title “Toolmaker of the Year 2020”.

Big Data solutions require densely integrated networks of production facilities and IT – which, in turn, oblige companies to invest heavily in resources and technological skills. This is why the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT and its project partner German Edge Cloud are currently developing an open test environment for research and industry in Aachen that will allow the testing of digitalization concepts in actual production facilities with a view to integrating these concepts into industrial production lines.

As transmitters of power and torque, shafts are inconspicuous yet irreplaceable components of cars, aircraft, ships or wind turbines. Billions of these components are produced worldwide every year in various sizes, most of them with shoulders or other surface features. A team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT has now developed the additive process »Express Wire Coil Cladding« (short, EW2C) for the surface treatment of shafts. The EW2C process is an alternative to common ablative processes of shaft machining such as turning, an alternative that not only conserves resources, but also lowers costs.

As a pioneer in applied research, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft brings together the expertise of 23 separate Fraunhofer facilities to develop new development and production technologies for innovative cell and gene therapeutics, as well as vaccines, in the “Production for Intelligent Medicine” innovation cluster. As a first step of the project, a concept for a modular pilot plant for the automatic production of these therapeutics is to be developed combining both Industry 4.0 and Health 4.0.