COMBILASER PROJECT – latest news

After successfully concluding the second Technical review by the European Commission in March, the consortium held a new consortium meeting in Orange, France during 8th and 11th May. The meeting was held at the premises of Mondragon Assembly (a company part of the internationally renowned Spanish worker cooperative MONDRAGON) The consortium reviewed the achieved results and set out the work that needs to be done in the future. The final year thus means an intensive prototype validation phase for all three of COMBILASER’s industrial partners: Hidria AET (automotive), Orkli (white goods), TMC (oil and gas industry). The SiEVA Development Centre aims to upgrade its intensive market-gathering data and background data in the second year with an intensive work on the exploitation plans for the COMBILASER-developed solutions. An important focus for SiEVA in the final year of the COMBILASER project is therefore strong information outreach towards the interested European public on the achieved results of the project and opportunities that these present for the European industry.
In order to achieve such a strong public outreach, the SiEVA Development Centre plans to create a project presentation video which shall be published shortly.
Our activities in the month of June included support for validation activities in order to verify the developed solutions. The SiEVA Development Centre provided especially strong support for validation activities for Hidria AET (COMBILASER industrial partner and project coordinator). Hidria AET finished the installation of its pilot solution in June and is beginning to test it to be applied to the laser-welding process for the all-new hi-tech Hidria OPTYMUS pressure sensor glow plug. The applied COMBILASER laser-welding solution incorporates key features provided by project partners. One of the key is the Self-Learning-System feature provided by the University of Sheffield. German partner 4D provided the laser monitoring system. Cavitar from Finland provided the melt pool monitoring system. Recendt from Austria provided the NDT system. Laser Zentrum Hannover and IK4 LORTEK from Spain brought the whole solution into a functioning package. The developed system enables zero-defect production, enhancing prospects to completely discard bad pieces and achieve 0-PPM standards.
The first tests have shown smooth functioning of the new system. The final validation is expected at end of summer or in early autumn. The system is set up in the clean room environment of the Hidria Automotive industry institute in Tolmin, Slovenia. The COMBILASER system thus supplements the already highly demanding and advanced automated machinery at the same location that has been provided for the manufacturing process of the new glow plug. Full functioning of the system together with the COMBILASER component is expected in beginning of 2018.
You can find more info on COMBILASER on the project webpage. Further information shall continue to be provided on this webpage as well.