Regional Operational Programme - European Regional Development Fund 2014-2020 (POR FESR) - Veneto Region

JOINPLASM Project

Axis 1 - RESEARCH, TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION

Action 1.1.4 - Support for collaborative R&D activities for the development of new sustainable technologies, new products and services

Research and development of new atmospheric plasma systems for surface treatments aimed at improving metal/polymer adhesion in innovative production processes.

The JoinPlasm project is a research and development project aimed at both product and process innovation, to be used in the advanced manufacturing systems and smart manufacturing sectors. The project involves studying plasma-assisted surface treatments to improve metal/polymer adhesion in overmolding processes.

In addition to using the current atmospheric plasma technology, developed and marketed by partner NADIR, for the plasma-phase deposition of a particular nanometric thin film known as a "primer-like coating", the project also saw the development of a new type of plasma source with a cylindrical geometry, capable of performing the surface modification process coaxially with respect to the materials of interest, and therefore better suited to treating elongated and tubular materials such as those of interest to partner VBN.

The development of the new atmospheric plasma source is supported by studies carried out by partner UNIPD, which handles the basic research of the system to be developed: from the simulation and modeling of simplified prototypes to their experimental verification.

Finally, thanks to the involvement of partner PROTECH, an innovative electronic system for generating and controlling the plasma was designed and built, also equipped with communication interfaces that make the new machine-process system remotely controllable, integrated into IoT systems, and compliant with the characteristic requirements of Industry 4.0.

Project value: €613,992.90 - Grant awarded: €306,996.45
Nadir Srl: €46,520.00 - Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padua: €96,837.75
Protech Engineering: €110,797.50 - VBN SpA: €52,841.20

Other completed initiatives

Protech took part in the call for Action 1.1.4 - Support for collaborative R&D activities for the development of new sustainable technologies, new products and services - with a project on the development of a sensor platform for industrial machinery, for the implementation of predictive diagnostics and production optimization features. The partnership benefited from an approved capital grant of €237,000.00.  

The system developed includes a platform for acquiring data from industrial machinery and a cloud system for data storage, plus software for data analysis for process control, diagnostics, and production optimization purposes. This infrastructure represents a technology that can support companies in upgrading or proposing new machinery capable of operating according to the Industry 4.0 paradigm. The tools developed can be used to diagnose problems in machinery, to identify upcoming maintenance or repair needs (predictive diagnostics), or to analyze consumption, slowdowns and anomalies in processes (production optimization).