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New mRNA vaccines and gene therapeutics have gained media attention as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. These pharmaceuticals, known as ATMPs (Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products), contain living cells or the nucleic acids DNA or RNA. Producing such ATMPs in high quality requires customized produc-tion facilities and an associated range of services. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT from Aachen and Harro Höfliger from Allmersbach im Tal are now entering into a cooperation to develop fully automated ATMP production systems: Together, the partners are developing an offer for consult-ing, analysis and product development through to the serial production of mar-ketable ATMP systems. The cooperation was launched with the signing of the cooperation agreement on November 14, 2023 in Aachen.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen has expanded its machinery with a new system for the automated molding of high-precision optical glass components. As a result, the institute is now the only research institution in Europe able to offer research on efficient small-series production of small glass optics using a wafer-level approach. Large individual optics with a diameter of up to 150 millimeters can also be manufactured with the facility.

How can digital methods be used to redesign and optimize existing production processes? For many companies, it is unclear how they can use Industry 4.0 technologies to their advantage. The current study report by the "International Center for Networked, Adaptive Production ICNAP" offers insights into the implementation of digitalization technologies in industry. This free study report provides a comprehensive overview of practical research on topics such as data security, sustainability and digital twins and is now available to download.

The sales market for plastic products is growing. At the same time, however, the environmental impact of non-degradable plastics is increasing and requires new recycling strategies. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen, researchers have developed a novel recycling process to recover the fiber composite material of used pressure tanks in a peeling process and reuse it for new lightweight products. The aim is to recycle fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) without any significant loss of product quality. The Fraunhofer team has now succeeded in doing so in the "Tankcycling" research project: Over 90 percent of the mechanical strength properties are retained in the recycled material.

How does nature undergo evolutionary adaptations, and what can production technology learn from nature to develop more flexible processes? Researchers from seven Fraunhofer Institutes have analyzed various elements of flexibility and self-adaptation in the Fraunhofer flagship project "EVOLOPRO" and applied them to the manufacturing of complex components. The research team has thus laid the foundation for a new generation of production systems in the form of a "Biological Manufacturing System."

Laser structuring is one of the most precise and environmentally friendly technologies for functionalizing surfaces – but structuring large surfaces is still too expensive for many companies. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT has now created the conditions for structuring large, shiny surfaces of metallic components with high precision using a conventional industrial robot. The Aachen researchers have reduced the enormous amounts of data generated in conventional path planning by using so called procedural structures. The new methods are being verified using a five-meter-long structured turbine rotor blade.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a groundbreaking imaging technique that generates high-resolution cross-sectional images of transparent and semitransparent media. It is used both in industrial metrology, for example in quality assurance, and in biomedical diagnostics, such as ophthalmology or tissue diagnostics. Companies and research institutes focusing on industrial metrology and medical technology also expect a wide range of other fields of application. They cooperate in the VDI/VDE - Society for Measurement and Automatic Control (GMA) in an expert committee on OCT. They have recently published the guideline VDI/VDE 5565 part 1 with standardized process descriptions.

While 5G mobile technology is beginning to make its way into the mainstream, research and development for industry continues apace: testing new technologies for 5G and now also for its successor 6G is the goal of the ambitious EU research project "TARGET-X" led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT based in Aachen, Germany. The project is aimed at the automotive, construction, energy and manufacturing sectors. Part of the funding, a total of six million euros, is available to up to 100 other research partners for participation in the project: To this end, sub-projects for specific technology developments and applications will be publicly called for proposals. Applications will be accepted shortly.

The SpaceX Cargo Dragon space shuttle departed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:30 a.m. CET on March 15, 2023. Among others, the shuttle carried an experimental setup that a team of students in the small satellite group KSat e.V. of the University of Stuttgart will use to conduct three experiments. The students were supported by a team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen, who designed and manufactured the super-light and extremely stable support structures for the experiments.

Processes for the cost-effective production of micro- and nanostructured surfaces from polymer material are in great demand for the industrial mass production of functional films and molded components. Existing injection molding and roll-to-roll processes often cannot yet achieve the required throughput and sufficiently high reproducibility for many promising product ideas. The ninth international conference "Polymer Replication on Nanoscale" (PRN), which will take place in Aachen on June 1 and 2, 2023, will therefore focus on processes for more efficient production of functional nanostructured surfaces and present possible solutions.

In early December members of the research community "International Center for Networked, Adaptive Production ICNAP" gathered in Aachen for the Annual Meeting. As a result of the two-day meeting, the participants chose five new research topics and participated in an intensive professional and personal exchange about the research work of the past year.