On 17-18 January 2023, the kickoff meeting of the PoSAdditive project was held in Dublin. PoSAddive (Powder Sheet Additive Manufacturing) is an EIT Raw Materials project aimed at upscaling and automating a novel powder sheet additive manufacturing (AM) technology. In addition to the Material group of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, supervised by Prof. Riccardo Casati, PoSAdditive involves the @Trinity College Dublin that will lead the project (coordinator @Prof. Rocco Lupoi), @Stellantis CRF, @3C Project Technologies, @Ferritico, @Gemmate Technologies, @Luleå University of Technology, and @Prima Additive. Moreover, a new startup company for feedstock commercialization will be launched.

PoSAddive will overcome several shortcomings of the commonly used AM technologies based on loose powder feedstock, such as:

• long clean-up times;
• difficulties in switching powder materials between consecutive jobs;
• high health & safety requirements;
• use of multi-materials.

PoSAddive will upscale and bring into the market a novel breakthrough metal AM technology using very flexible metal powder sheets based on a novel binder technology to be locally transferred by a laser beam to form a new structure layer-by-layer. This new AM technology system and business concept will be developed by partners and installed to provide the full service of a multi-material AM system and powder sheet delivery installation. The name of this technology is MAPS - Metal Additive manufacturing using Powder Sheets - and by the end of the project will reach TRL7.