20 July, 2023ADDIMAT is participating in the Minaku project belonging to the Elkartek program, a project in which the consortium has been achieving interesting results since its inception in April 2022. The Elkartek program is managed by the Basque Business Development Agency.
The consortium for this project is made up of members of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network, since the program supports collaborative research carried out by RVCTI agents in the fields of smart industry. The project leader is the Azterlan Technology Center, and it works in collaboration with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Communications Engineering of the UPV-EHU, the TEKNIKER Technology Center, Mondragon Goi Eskola Politeknikoa, Tecnalia Research & Innovation Foundation, Lortek Foundation and the Machine Tool Research Foundation, INVEMA.
The main objective of the MINAKU project is the development of new cyber-physical systems that will allow key data to be extracted through sensors embedded at different depths from the surface of metal components, inspired by the nervous systems of human skin. The concept of sensitive metal skins that allow the existence of surface-monitored engineering components even under extreme conditions presents a low degree of technological maturity (TRL) and constitutes a positioning opportunity for the RVCTi in the near future of the metalworking industry.
Through the results obtained, it is intended to promote technologies related to additive manufacturing, since it demonstrates in a practical way the need to implement processes connected to this sector and the improvements it brings in the context of advanced manufacturing. This allows introducing benefits that additive technologies present in real production environments. In turn, this project is contributing to the development of new opportunities that accompany the technological-digital transition, since cyber-physical systems integrate various attributes, such as information processing capacity, connection/interaction with other systems and monitoring the environment.
