Jitka Metelkova

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 spin-off company ‘3DS-LayerWise' which is focusing on the production of metal LPBF parts and corresponding equipment. Since 2016, Prof. Kruth retired and was succeeded by Prof. Van Hooreweder and later also Prof. Vrancken, who are continuing the powder & laser based AM research. At present, KU Leuven is more active than ever in the AM domain, with several sub teams in various research areas. This gave rise in 2022 to the prestigious KU Leuven Institute on Additive Manufacturing, or in short LEUVEN.AM. More than 200 researchers from all over KU Leuven and UZ Leuven are joining forces in this institute, to research new machines & processes, new materials and new application domains for all kind of Additive Manufacturing processes.