EDAG Engineering GmbH and partners LZN, Concept Laser and BLM won the gold Materialica award on 19.10.2016. The famous award, which is presented in Munich every year, was handed over to Dr. Martin Hillebrecht, Head of the EDAG Competence Centre, and its partners. The MATERIALICA Awards jury paid tribute to the great potential of the competition entry with regard to resource efficiency with its combination of classic roll forming technology and industrial 3D printing.
The growing number of alternative powertrains and vehicle derivatives represent an enormous challenge for vehicle manufacturers and engineering companies. The important thing is to design body concepts in such a way that an increasing degree of weight optimised vehicle variance will also be possible in the future, in combination with powertrain variants for load categories for low-volume production.
EDAG, in conjunction with Laser Zentrum Nord (Hamburg), Concept Laser (Lichtenfels) and the BLM Group (Levico, Italy), took up this challenge and developed a spaceframe demonstrator.
Its success lies in the combination of 3D-printed steel body nodes and intelligently rolled profiles. The nodes can be multifunctional, so that different load category variants, for instance, can be produced with great flexibility and on demand without additional tooling, production equipment and start-up costs.
The result is a bionically designed, load path-optimised spaceframe structure featuring a com-bination of the ultimate in bionic lightweight design and "Industry 4.0" production strategies.