Chair of Materials and Surface Engineering
Materials and Surface Engineering

GIGA – Green and intelligent electroplating for the supply of relevant aircraft components based on modular, robot-based electroplating with inline process monitoring


On 9 July 2024, the LuFo project GIGA started with a successful kick-off meeting at Chemnitz University of Technology. The project aims to develop a green and intelligent electroplating process using modular, robot-based electroplating with inline process monitoring. This enables safe and reproducible coating of relevant aircraft components in small and medium batch sizes. The project is supported and funded by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK).

The complementary consortium consists of Scholz Mechanik GmbH, KleRo GmbH Roboterautomation, OTE Scheigenpflug GmbH, the Institute of Aircraft Production Technology (IFPT/TU Hamburg) and our professorship. In its project work, WOT is focussing on the development of a robot-assisted electroplating system that covers the entire process chain for component coating. To this end, we are expanding and modernising the existing system with regard to larger process containers for coating individual parts and the use of racks. The degree of automation will be further increased in order to meet the quality requirements for aerospace components. This includes automatic bath maintenance and layer analysis. These improvements are crucial for the validation of new simulation models in order to gain an even better understanding of the relationships between process, microstructure and properties. Our research aims to reduce resource consumption and the reject rate, minimise the amount of waste water and contribute to a more environmentally friendly production of aircraft components.

Initial discussions at the kick-off meeting revealed a broad spectrum of promising new ideas and potential applications. We are looking forward to an exciting project!

The electroplating robot of the WOT professorship can be seen in action under the following link:
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/mb/WOT/resources/videos/bgr.mp4

 

Image: During the kick-off meeting, the project partners visited the centrepiece of the GIGA project, the electroplating robot in the laboratories of the WOT professorship. (Photos: private)  

16.7.2024 – Research at the professorship ( )

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