Press Releases

Fraunhofer is now picking up speed in the field of additive manufacturing in the Netherlands: Through the cooperation of the Fraunhofer Project Center at the University of Twente (FPC@UT) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT with the Dutch supplier Additive Industries B.V. based in Eindhoven, Fraunhofer is further expanding its activities in the Benelux countries. Via the Fraunhofer Project Center, Dutch industry in particular will gain completely new access to current research and development in the field of additive manufacturing (AM).

Having established a center of excellence in Aachen, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT is now bringing together a network of companies and research institutes to create a new photonics hub in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the "Aachen Center for Optics Production", or ACOP for short, the Fraunhofer researchers are pooling their own expertise with that of the regional optical industry to jointly create a digital, networked infrastructure for optics production. Eleven companies have agreed to support the center in its work. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is funding the collaborative venture to the tune of 2.8 million euros over an initial period of three years.

The majority of driver assistance systems and completely autonomous vehicles currently use solid-state systems, known as LIDAR systems to measure distances and detect obstacles: The abbreviation LIDAR stands for "light detection and ranging" and describes a method used to measure the environment using the reflection of emitted laser beams. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Tech-nology IPT in Aachen, Germany, has developed a system for the automated as-sembly of solid-state LIDAR systems so that such systems can soon be made available to the automotive industry at low cost. The prototype was integrated into a basic machine manufactured by the project partner Aixemtec GmbH and put into operation together with Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH, worldwide technology leader in LIDAR sensors.

Modern sensor technology can already collect an extensive range of data from machines and equipment. Analyzing these data can expose anomalies between planned and actual production in order to support optimization purposes. However, data storage and analysis still tend to be decentralized and involve a time-lag. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen has joined forces with international partners to network industrial production wirelessly with 5G in order to test its potential for industrial environments.

The assembly of bundled optical fibers with plug connections, which are used in information and communication technology, is still difficult to automate today: Fibers with fixed polarization must be aligned with great precision in the connector, and their handling and bonding also require maximum accuracy. Together with the Dutch University of Twente and the industrial partners Aixemtec GmbH from Herzogenrath and Phix B.V. from Enschede, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT from Aachen presents a modular system for the automated assembly of polarization-maintaining fiber arrays at the "Laser – World of Photonics" trade fair from 24 to 27 June 2019 in Munich.

For the functionality of optical systems, the geometrical shape of the functional optical surfaces and their position relative to each other is a decisive criterium. However, small-aperture polymer optics, which are in great demand, for example, in mobile phone cameras, endoscopes or car sensors, cannot yet be checked with sufficient accuracy using standard metrological methods. At the LASER - World of Photonics trade fair from 24 to 27 June 2019 in Munich, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT from Aachen, Germany, will present a new tomographic method that can measure such optical components with a small aperture non-destructively and in one step.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen has developed a high-speed microscope for quality control of large-area objects for the semiconductor and electronics industries or for rapid testing of biological samples. The microscope digitizes samples with up to 500 frames per second. At Control, the international trade fair for quality assurance, from 7 to 10 May 2019 in Stuttgart, hall 6, booth 6301, the metrology experts from Aachen will be demonstrating for the first time how this system can be combined with gesture control by means of Smart Glasses and thus controlled and operated even more efficiently.

During her trip to Japan, Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek visited the OCTmapp research alliance. Within the framework of OCTmapp, the Fraunhofer IPT and the Tokyo Women's Medical University (TWMU) are establishing an international network and research structure in Japan on the topic of optical coherence tomography for new medical applications. At the TWMU in Tokyo, the Minister looked at how German-Japanese research cooperation works in practice.

How is a digital twin generated from machine data? How can companies apply the new 5G mobile communications standard in their production? What software is required to power the Industrial Internet of Things? These are the questions currently being addressed by the three Aachen-based Fraunhofer Institutes in collaboration with 15 partners from industry who have joined their new research community in the International Center for Networked Adaptive Production, known as ICNAP. In the course of their first annual meeting, the ICNAP partners ranked these three subject areas as being in particularly urgent need of attention and selected them to be the focus of research and development projects in the coming year. It is anticipated that by the end of the year 2019, these will have been fully explored in three separate studies.

At the world's leading industrial exhibition, the Hannover Messe, the focus is on one subject: 5G. While many exhibitors will be showing individual applications of the technology, the Aachen-based Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT and the Swedish mobile network supplier Ericsson will be presenting German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven an integrated approach to researching the industrial use of 5G in Industry 4.0 – the concept of the ”5G-Industry Campus Europe” – on the occasion of the head of government's traditional visit.