Structure

The DMRC is a multi-stakeholder organization. Its organizational and contentual setup can be derived from the picture above. The DMRC is founded on five contentual pillars, Laser Sintering, Laser Melting, Fused Deposition Modeling, Construction and Business. Its obvious: we pay attention to the entire process from thinking ahead products of tomorrow to laying the foundations for their manufacturing. In doing so we work close to the technology and to business. From a research perspective, we support the contentual pillars by twelve chairs. Each chair conducts research projects within one or more of these pillars – the crosses in the illustration show the main activities of each chair.

We draw our funding from both, public and industrial sources. Public research projects are coordinated by the „Paderborn Institute for Additive Fabrication“ (PIAF). The PIAF central research unit of Paderborn University for research in the context of additive fabrication and includes the DMRC. Numerous competences are bundled at the PIAF: Scientists from the Faculties of Mechanical Engineering, Natural Sciences, Economics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics work together on an interdisciplinary basis to advance basic and application-oriented research and transfer it to industrial practice. The DMRC itself hosts all industry research from companies supporting us. Those companies are called partners and can initiate (research) projects within the DMRC. For our partners, three different partnership models are available – essentially differing in the annual payment and voting power. As our projects are publicly and privatly funded, we maintain a balance of interests in the diverse field of Additive Manufacturing. It is also worth pointing out the importance of the DMRC as a communication platform for all of our stakeholders. Thereby, we quickly leverage contacts and initiate projects.

Eventually our success boils down to a simple recipe: Talented staff, engagement of professors, superb equipment and powerful partners. Within the next pages you will as well get knowledge about the content of the projects being performed under the funding conditions.