 So we here at the ID Tech Act show here in Berlin and who are you? Hi, I'm Inge Wirt from Fraunhofer Institute in Bremen and I am a project manager and responsible for integration of functions in parts and components. And who are you? Hi, my name is Volker Zellmer. I'm also from Fraunhofer Eiferm in Bremen and I'm responsible for the department of smart systems and we work on printed electronics and 3d printing. So there's a lot of different Fraunhofer's, right? Which one is the Eiferm? Well, Eiferm is the Institute for Manufacturing, Technology and Advanced Materials. We are located in Bremen in the north and west of Germany and you're absolutely right. There are also lots of other colleagues here from the Fraunhofer Society. But is this the one that's the most like printed electronics kind of or there's other also? Well, each Fraunhofer Institute has a special core competence. Our core competence are materials and process development and other Institute focus a bit more on product development, for example, or on electronic devices and therefore we have different institutes here. So what are you showing here, for example? What is this? Yeah, you see this is a carbon reinfest structure. You see this is printed here. This is a silver conductive line and it's integrated here in the part and you can see that the electrical current is going here and you see the lamp is online and it's integrated in the structure. This is very cool for bicycles, but also for airplanes or everything. Yeah, you want to integrate the cables. Is it a big deal? It is not not not only for bicycles. This is only to show it that this is possible for bicycles, but we can integrate structures in any components and parts. For example, most in automotive and also for for airplanes, aircrafts, a lot. I think there was a keynote. They were talking about this, right? The airbus. Exactly. They want to reduce the cables. Yes. How much is it? 10% of the airplane is cables? Well, I think if we integrate this technology in the plane manufacturer, you will be able to save much more weight. But it's not only to reduce the weight. It's also to reduce the maintenance working with wires and integrating wires in an airplane. It could be much easier to use printed electronics. And that's the reason why we integrate sensors in the airplane. For example, here we see this is a drastic sensor and you see when I move my hand in different positions and you see a signal here and this can be translated into a signal. For example, moving something up or moving something down. So this is this printed electronics sensor here? Yes. On glass or what? What do you do here? On plastic? Yes. Yeah, this is here on plastic, but it can be also on glass. It is flexible on this. So this whole pattern here, is that what makes the sensor? Yes. Yeah, we have this is a silver structure. This is a kind of capacitive sensor and so the sensor detects where my hand is and then the signal is detected here. Is this a very big deal? Like nobody's doing this? Or are you the cutting edge of this technology? Yes, we get last year we got the ID TechEx award for this technology here. So is it mass production? It is individual production. Individual production. And so is it a big challenge for you to get all this cool stuff into the mass production? Is it how you work also? Yeah, that is exactly what we do at Fraunhofer in special, that we develop basic new technologies that are later on transferred to industry parties for lab-scale productions for product development and at the end of the day to earn money. And what is this one here? Yeah, here you can see this is an RFID structure and you can measure here the signal and there's a ship here and you can ride on the ship and you can also read the signal out of the ship. This is kind of NFC communication. So is this a special way to do it? Or there's a lot of RFID tags, right? So what's special about this one? This is, we can adapt it to a specific application. This is a very very small structure and yeah, the antenna structure is here printed, but we can also This is almost a material. On what? It's a kind of special material, kind of almost a material. It's a Fraunhofer material. And what is this? Well, this is a typical 3D printable filament. Whenever you read something about 3D printing, you will often find the FDM printing technology. This is a plastic-based material, a thermoplastic-based material and we developed a special process to fill thermoplastic materials with carbon fillers. So at the end of the day here, we have a very flexible 3D printable material, having a very high electrical and also having a very high conductive conductivity. And what we can do with this kind of material, we can 3D print heat exchanger, for example, and we can print 3D parts to be used for electromagnetic shielding as another application. So you can 3D print something that's conductive? Yes. And is this a big deal? That is indeed a big deal. So we have a lot of requests from very different branches, very different industries to that kind of material, because actually you can print, on the one hand, thermoplastic materials or you can print full metal materials and now we have the possibility to print composite materials, combining the best properties of both worlds. So you could, in one go, you can print the stuff that's conductive and the stuff that's anticonductive, right? Exactly. So then you print the whole thing. Yes, that's our aim. But how far is this? Well, it's not, as you can see here, from our very first demonstrator. This is two different prints, right? These are two different prints? Yes, that's right. But you will find today on the market already printing solutions, being able to print several materials in one of the same step. So with our materials, you can really create new products based on technologies that are already established on the market. But what's the resolution and how long times it takes? Because if it takes like five hours to make a little thing, it would be an issue, right? You want to make it fast or? Yeah, we would like to enhance the speed of the process, also by enhancing our material and for sure it's always important to print as fast as possible. Nice. And what is it? What are you talking about here on the screen? Is this showing some processes you have? Yes, we show here different processes. What you see here, this is inkjet printing process. Yeah, this is a gestic sensor structure, which is printed here on the printer. And then you have different demos here. You have 3D screen printing, direct write. Yes, correct. So you do a lot of 3D printing. Yes, we have nearly every technology available at our institute, which is common. We have aerosoljet printing, we have inkjet printing, we have dispensing technology, screen printing, pad printing, and we can also combine these technologies to each other. And what is also possible that we can use a robot system to print on larger parts and components. Is this what it is? There's a robot there. This is also a robot. What you see here at the moment is that these structures are transferred into different printing stations, because each technology has advantages and disadvantages. And to combine the advantages of the printing technologies, we can transfer parts. And we can make a kind of small production. And what is this? Is this showing something? Yes, you see here there are printed conductive lines. You see here this is a little LED, and you see there are the signal lines, the smaller one, and these are the power lines. And these are also printed. These are by dispensing and aerosoljet printing. And conductivity is exactly the same as any other cable? Nearly the same. It depends on the process and on the filling weight of the material. But normally it is not so good as a cable, but in the range. You show some 3D printing stuff here. A couple other examples, right? Some different things here. Just to demonstrate your skills, like precision and stuff. Yes, we are showing what is possible and what products we can print and where we can integrate sensors. For example we integrate temperature sensors in parts, we integrate strain gauges, humidity sensors, pressure sensors. So there are lots of possibilities to integrate sensors in parts and components. Is EFAM connected with the specific university or is it just a separate institute? We are separate, but we are in close cooperation with the University of Boehmann because the head of our institute, Professor Matthias Busse, is also at the University of Boehmann. Is there a lot of students working on this or a lot of people? How big is this? Yes, our institute is a larger institute from the front of our society. And we are about 700 employees and we also have a lot of students working at our institute to make a PhD or make a bachelor and master. What do you think about the IDTech action? It's fascinating and it's very good to come in close contact to the other people dealing with printed electronics and to talk to our customers. This is your field, right? Yes, it is indeed. This is my field. Cool, thanks a lot. Thank you. You're welcome.