Skills Strategy in Additive Manufacturing Project (SAM) will tackle the current European need of developing an effective system to identify and anticipate the right skills for Additive Manufacturing

Technology is evolving at a much faster pace than the development of the workers` skills to use it. Most of the current initiatives and projects that focus on skills shortages are developing skills for existing needs and shortages, meaning that industry is already demanding personnel with those competences. Looking at a bigger picture, it means that there is no strategical approach to skills in Additive Manufacturing and that the current methodology to answer to skills needs is based on reaction instead of prediction and planning. Adding to this, the time between identification of the skills needs and shortages and the capability of deploying qualification/training modules to address them is not aligned with the industry requirements, since in most cases it takes about 1-2 years to create the required professional profile/qualification or competence unit/training module and to have it deployed.

The Wohlers Report 2018 on 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing states that the overall additive manufacturing industry grew 21% in 2017 as the industry expanded by more than €1 thousand million. According to Ernst & Young, the demand for AM and related services has increased in the last years and is expected that in 2020 the market volume reaches €10 thousand million.

As Europe seeks to retain its leading position in industrial competitiveness, there is an urgent need to establish a platform for Additive Manufacturing (AM) skills at European, National and Regional levels.

To meet this challenge the project Sector Skills Strategy in Additive Manufacturing (SAM) started in January 2019. The initiative will tackle the current European need for developing an effective system to identify and anticipate the right skills for the Additive Manufacturing (AM) sector demands in response to the increasing labour market needs, thus, contributing for the smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of the AM sector.

 To address the challenges described above the SAM project intends to:

•  Build a sector skills strategy in AM;

• Assess and anticipate skills (gaps and shortages) in AM;

• Support with data the AM European Qualification System and foster wideness of its scope;

• (Re) design professional profiles according to the industry requirements;

• Develop specific relevant qualifications to be delivered for the AM Sector;

• Increase the attractiveness of the sector to young people, whilst promoting gender balance;

• Strengthen education-research-industry partnerships and encourage creativity “in companies and relevant educational and scientific institutions”;

• Track students, trainees and job seekers and promote match making between job offer and search.

A European Commission funded Study on the Development of Industrial 3D Printing and AM from the perspective of providing protection to Intellectual Property (IP) right holders is being conducted by Bournemouth University UK in collaboration with a team consisting of partners drawn from UK, Germany, Austria and Finland. The project led by Professor Dinusha Mendis (Bournemouth University) aims to analyse and clarify how the IP framework can concretely bring protection to right holders and in doing so, will address possible gaps and opportunities in order to stimulate development of the 3D printing technologies.

As part of this project, the team is keen to hear from as many industry stakeholders as possible and particularly those from the aerospace, automotive, health, consumer, energy, construction and industrial and tooling sectors. In shaping future policy, we are very keen to hear your views and input now.

 If you are interested, please get in touch with Dinusha Mendis at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Further information about the project as well as the on-going work on 3D Printing /AM and IP can be found here, here, and here

The laser-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) of metal parts made a significant progress in the last two decades, especially in laser-based powder-bed technology (also called DMLS – Direct Metal Laser Sintering), broadening the range of materials available for them and also in developing the necessary data pre-processing tool. The AM technology has matured to reach a level where it can be considered as a viable alternative for producing net shape metal components for relatively small markets, predominantly for prototyping and small batch manufacture. This means only for low-scale applications where one material is used, the accuracy is not too high and surface integrity is achieved in one single AM processing step. Now it is necessary to improve productivity, cost and speed to bring this technology to a larger scale, towards mass market applications.The European project MAESTRO (Modular laser-based additive manufacturing platform for large scale industry) will help to answer these challenges.

In order to demonstrate the MAESTRO platform capabilities on a 5th demonstrator, companies are invited to propose case studies for future products to be manufactured by the MAESTRO technologies. The proposals will be evaluated (vs. economical, technical and societal criteria) and ranked by the project partners. For the best proposal, the fabrication process will be characterised with respect to industrialisation, i.e. throughput, throughput time, process parameter control, yield, cost. Free prototyping of the products will be proposed to the winner of the contest.
All the companies that would like to participate are invited to:
- Fill in a participation file available at https://www.maestro-project.eu/downloads/public-documents/
- Send the application form at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. before February 28th 2019, 5 PM