What are smart materials? And how will their use change product manufacturing and our lives in the future? To find out, a team from Lichtempfindlich Filmproduktion in Magdeburg visited Exipnos today.
Merseburg, August 31, 2017. Smart materials are materials that, under defined conditions, change selected properties in a predetermined way. For example, plastics could become conductive under certain environmental influences, assume a desired shape, change their color, or “adapt” in a similar way.
Creating such intelligent materials represents the “high art” of materials science. Typically, thousands of material samples must be produced and tested before the desired result is achieved.
And this is precisely where Exipnos comes in: The Merseburg-based company is collaborating with the Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems (IMWS) in Halle (Saale) on a project called “DigiLab ,” which will significantly shorten the development time for such intelligent materials. The stated goal is a digital development platform for functionalized thermoplastics, making “Industry 4.0″—the comprehensive digitalization and automation of production—a reality in the preceding step: the research and development of materials.
A key role in this is played by the DCIM direct compounding technology developed by Exipnos . This technology eliminates compound production, a previously necessary intermediate step in plastics processing. As a result, the material composition can be set and fine-tuned directly during final processing on the injection molding machine. Furthermore, plastics processed with DCIM are significantly less susceptible to undesirable influences from heating, cooling, or mechanical processing.
The film crew from Lichtempfindlich Filmproduktion came to Merseburg to document how this future technology already works today. Company founder Peter Putsch had to answer many questions – both in front of and behind the camera. The film is being produced on behalf of the Investment and Marketing Corporation of Saxony-Anhalt (IMG) as part of a series about economic and technological innovations in the state.