The “Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 Special Issue” for the Progress in Additive Manufacturing (PIAM) Journal contains nine best papers submitted to the Fraunhofer Direct Digital Manufacturing Conference 2023 which took place on 15 and 16 March 2023 in Berlin, Germany.

The conference is a biennial event for Additive Manufacturing (AM) and was established in 2012. It brings together around 150 experts from academia and industry around the world. The purpose of Fraunhofer DDMC is to provide a platform between researchers, enterprises, and users of AM technologies for intellectual exchange, to gather the latest information about trends, progress, and to further the potential of these emerging technologies for industrial application.

This year, the conference has attracted 51 oral and 7 poster presentations, organized into 19 different sessions. In addition, four distinguished keynote speakers, representing research and industry, gave their very personal view on the future of Additive Manufacturing: Indian entrepreneur Aditya Chandavarkar, space architect Dr. Barbara Imhof of LIQUIFER Systems Group Austria, Prof. Mihaela Vlasea from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Dr. Oezlem Weiss, CEO of Expertants GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany.

The nine best papers of Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 were selected based on a robust double-blinded review process. With their outstanding quality, the papers are not part of the Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 conference proceedings, but instead exclusively published in this special issue for the Progress in Additive Manufacturing Journal, having passed a second double-blinded review cycle. The selected papers, authored by researchers from four different countries, focus on state-of-the-art topics for fundamental and applied research and novel applications for AM. The papers cover a wide range of different AM technologies, including a variety of Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) processes for metals and polymers, Directed Energy Deposition (DED) and filament-based Material Extrusion methods. Aspects of pre- (topology optimization) and post-(metallization) processing of AM parts are covered, as well as investigations of high-frequency devices and extruders as trending AM applications.

Fraunhofer DDMC is organized by the Fraunhofer Competence Field Additive Manufacturing (Fraunhofer ADDITIVE), integrating eighteen Fraunhofer institutes across Germany that are active in applied research on AM. Fraunhofer ADDITIVE not only consolidates Fraunhofer’s AM research activities, but also covers the entire AM process chain, including Engineering (application development and design), Materials (polymers, metals, ceramics), Technologies (powder-bed-based, extrusion-based, print-based), Quality (reproducibility, reliability, quality management) as well as Software and Simulation. Fraunhofer DDMC has partnered with the PIAM Journal to publish the very best papers in one special issue of the journal. We thank PIAM’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Eujin Pei, for supporting this Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 special issue. Special thanks go to Silvia Schilgerius, Jutta Daum and Aiswarya Satheesan for their time and dedication to make this PIAM special issue a success.

We hope you will enjoy reading this PIAM special issue and attend Fraunhofer DDMC 2023 (March 15 and 16, 2023 in Berlin, Germany) or our next DDMC conference in 2025. We look forward to receiving your contribution and welcoming you as participants in this exciting event!