KU Leuven Additive Manufacturing Institute

Would you like to collaborate with us ? Email to am@kuleuven.be KU Leuven is pioneering in Additive Manufacturing (AM) since 1990. Research on AM was initiated at the Mechanical Engineering Department of KU Leuven by Professor Jean-Pierre Kruth. Initially, research focused on the production of polymer parts for rapid prototyping purposes. This led to the foundation of Materialise , the first spin-off company of the AM-group, which is known today as one of the key players in additive manufacturing of polymers and software development for AM. Already in 1991, the AM-group started investigating the possibilities to manufacture metallic parts by means of laser-based processes such as Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF). To facilitate process optimisation, the AM-group designed and built their own LPBF apparatus. Over the years, this unique equipment was further improved and later also equipped with a real-time process monitoring system. These developments were commercialized in a second sp...