Lars Vanmunster's Contact Details

Lars Vanmunster's Company Details

KU Leuven Additive Manufacturing Group

Heverlee, Heverlee, BE • 20 - 49 Employees
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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 who is 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 as indicated below and with Dr. Ann Witvrouw as industrial research manager.