Electrochemical processes to meet the needs of Industry 4.0 or Electrochemistry 4.0

Manufacturing industry is currently at the dawn of a new industrial revolution. Within the past two centuries, humanity passed through three industrial revolutions leading us to the ability to mass produce complex products in affordable ways. However, manufacturing industry lost a significant element in this journey: individuality. Today’s customer is part of a global society in which connectivity and access to information plays a key role. As such a customer wants to be part of the world but in a very personal way, for example through unique and personal products. Industry recognized this new trend. Novel business models emerged. New key words are: cloud services, smart manufacturing, mass personalization.

However, this results in a new challenge for manufacturing industry. Instead of mass fabricated products small series (batch-size 1) are required. Individual products can be fabricated by rapid-prototyping, but it is very challenging to produce personalized products in an economical way. New processes need to be developed which are of a new kind. This new revolution was recognized recently by industry and in Germany the key word industry 4.0 was introduced to characterize this “fourth industrial revolution”.

The aim of industry 4.0 is to design smart factories in which batch-size 1 products on demand can be produced economically. This means that any cost not directly related to the final product must be reduced to zero. In mass production such indirect cost could be removed by spreading them over the immense number of identical fabricated products. In batch-size 1 production this is no longer possible, eliminating processes which require expensive tooling. Manufacturing processes must further be able to adapt themselves quickly and show a very high flexibility. Even process optimization becomes a real challenge.

Among these challenges post-processing technologies take a prominent place. Manufacturing of a product is never achieved in a single step, even upon using technologies as additive manufacturing (AM). AM parts require post-processing in terms of surface finish. However, as printed parts are generally complex (much more complex parts can be produced by AM, reducing needs for assembly, driving costs down) methods for surface finishing become difficult to identify. Currently few processes exist, which are all very labor intensive.

These considerations show that suitable manufacturing processes for batch-size 1 production must be highly flexible and have little overhead (in particular the need for tooling). As such, electrochemical processes are very promising. Such processes require little to no specialized tooling and are able to handle virtually any shape, including inner surfaces. In the present seminar, it is shown how electrochemical processes can be used to design new manufacturing processes for industry 4.0. Some examples are discussed in the field of hard to machine materials, post-processing technologies and surface functionalization.

Bio: Rolf Wuthrich is an associate professor at the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal since 2006. He is leading a research laboratory on advanced manufacturing with special focus on electrochemical technologies meeting the demand of Industry 4.0. Among others, together with Posalux SA, his group developed a novel glass micromachining technology allowing the lean production of ultra-customized glass parts. He is as well very active in the field of 3D printing were he develops post-processing technologies able to handle complex shapes including narrow inner surfaces. Another domain of activity is electrodeposition and electroforming and surface functionalization.

At Concordia, he recently imitated the research Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CAM). CAM’s mission is to integrate the advanced manufacturing specializations into a world class “Industry 4.0 smart factory” environment. CAM integrates expertise in manufacturing, computer engineering, material science, industrial engineering and metrology. Specializations include green electrochemical manufacturing processes, laser machining, additive manufacturing, micro-devices and computational mechanics. CAM will develop new design rules and flexible processes for manufacturing highly customized products economically and efficiently and spawn spin-off companies.