3D printing will have a significant impact on the production of the future and will open up a wide range of new possibilities. The processes, also known as additive manufacturing (AM in short) allow for enormous flexibility and freedom of design and have become an indispensable manufacturing technology in today’s industrial applications. However, the majority of the materials used were originally developed for other manufacturing processes. Additive processes often have special processing properties for which many of these materials are not optimally adapted to.

This is where OPTIMAT comes in and supports research and development of new material designs optimized for additive manufacturing as well as their industrialization. In this context, not only process-related adaptations of already known and applied materials will be analyzed and optimized, but new materials will also be developed that can make precise and tailored use of the characteristics of additive processes. The main focus is on the development of new material compositions, processes for powder production as well as quality-assured process development for the optimization of manufacturing processes on the basis of the new material properties and the corresponding system technology. In addition, the topics of economic efficiency of the processes, recyclability and environmental compatibility of the materials, as well as aspects of digitalization and standardization are addressed.