Project description and overview:

Mineral Technologies are not the nominal lead participant in this project. However, it is their vision that is driving it. MT have a five-year plan to adopt additive manufacturing for their spiral manufacturing and they see the Boundless AM technology as highly viable and are willing to collaborate with AMGC and Boundless AM to fund the development of the Boundless AM technology. This project seeks to deliver a commercially viable 2 metre single revolution 300mm spiral for Mineral Technologies. This is a project which attempts grow 3D objects such as spirals from the ground up, using new resins, new hardware, and new software.

The proposed Boundless AM system is a new conceptualized manufacturing platform that features bottom-up resin additive manufacturing and integrated curing for the creation of large composite products. Existing manufacturing techniques used to create large composite products have a number of disadvantages, which Boundless AM seeks to overcome with their portable solution.

The project will help speed up the development of the Boundless AM system to a TRL 4. The commercialisation efforts that will follow will initially be focused on manufacturing spirals for MT, hence the cash contribution by that company. This commercialisation effort will include a containerised version of the system, such that it can be transported to the site where spirals are being used so they can be manufactured on site.