Electrochemical manufacturing technologies for Industry 4.0

制造业正处于新一轮工业革命的开端。在过去的两个世纪里，人类经历了三次工业革命，从而能够以负担得起的方式大规模生产复杂的产品。然而，一个新的挑战出现了。产品寿命缩短，客户要求个性化产品。需要小批量、均匀批量生产出现。传统的制造工艺很难满足这些需求。需要开发新型的制造工艺。当产品的设计发生变化（例如，避免使用特定的工具）时，这些工艺必须使制造费用最小化，解决零件的复杂性，并最大限度地减少生产最终产品的步骤。增材制造（AM）似乎是理想的解决方案。然而，除了自身的挑战之外，制造业将依赖于单一技术将是非常令人惊讶的。需要与AM一起工作或独立工作的新流程。该计划的新颖之处在于探索电化学制造工艺对大规模个性化的适用性。长期目标是开发合适的新型制造技术，以应对小批量生产的挑战。在短期内，电化学工艺将被探索，因为它们具有很大的潜力，适合于小批量生产的制造技术。特别是：模具：展示和探索开发超低模具成本的电化学制造工艺的能力。在这部分程序中，采用了适合玻璃高精度加工的热电化学工艺，火花辅助化学雕刻（SACE）作为模型工艺。它将探讨如何在不考虑要生产的零件的设计变化的情况下，实现非常低的模具成本。成本高昂的优化过程也将得到解决。复杂性：开发能够后处理通过增材制造生产的复杂金属零件的电化学工艺。增材制造可以生产非常复杂的金属零件。然而，需要大量的后处理才能达到所需的表面光洁度。脉冲电抛光将朝着这一目标发展。要解决的挑战是开发能够预测抛光后零件实现几何形状的模型，并使电喷涂适应金属增材制造零件的高初始表面粗糙度（高达100微米以上）。减少加工步骤：在该计划的最后一部分，将开发一种结合SACE和电化学加工的新型混合工艺，以便能够加工金属/玻璃夹层材料。这种材料越来越多地用于现代光学印刷电路板或智能手机等先进设备。

Manufacturing industry is at the dawn of a new industrial revolution. During the past two centuries, humanity passed through three industrial revolutions leading to the ability to mass produce complex products in affordable ways. However a new challenge emerged. Products have shorter life times and customers ask for individualized products. The need for small series, even batch-size 1, production appeared. Traditional manufacturing processes can hardly full-fill these needs. New manufacturing processes need to be developed which are of a new kind. Such processes must minimize manufacturing overhead appearing when the design of the product changes (e.g. avoid specific tooling), address complexity of parts and minimize number of steps leading to the final product. Additive manufacturing (AM) seems the ideal solution. However, besides having its own challenges, it would be very surprising that manufacturing industry will rely on a single technology. New processes are needed that work together with AM or independently. The novelty of the proposed program is in exploring electrochemical manufacturing processes for their suitability of mass personalisation. The long term objective is to develop suitable novel manufacturing technologies able to address the challenges of small series production. In the short term electrochemical processes will be explored due to their high potential to be suitable manufacturing technologies for low batch size production.In particular:Tooling: Demonstrate and explore the capability to develop electrochemical manufacturing processes with ultra-low tooling costs. In this part of the program a thermo-electrochemical process, Spark Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE) suited for glass high precision machining is used as model process. It will be explored how, regardless of design change of the-to-be produced part, very low tooling costs can be achieved. Costly optimisation procedure will be addressed too. Complexity: Develop electrochemical processes able to post-process complex metal parts produced by additive manufacturing. AM can produced very complex metal parts. However extensive post-processing is required to achieve the required surface finish. Pulse electropolishing will be developed towards this aim. The challenges that will be addressed are the development of models able to predict the achieved geometry of the part after polishing and to adapt electroploshing to the high initial surface roughness of metal AM parts (up to hundred and more micrometers).Reduction of process steps: In this last part of the program a novel hybrid process combining SACE and electrochemical machining will be developed in order to be able to machine metal/glass sandwich materials. Such materials are more and more used in modern optical printed circuit boards or advanced devices such as smart phones.