In contrast to common layer-based additive manufacturing methods, VAM produces the entire volume in one process step and enables part production without supporting structures, minimising material consumption, and allows printing over existing structures or products. The leading VAM light dosage technique at present is tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (TVAM), also known as Computed Axial Lithography (CAL), first reported in 2019. Over the past five years, several advancements in resolution have been achieved. Nonetheless, a significant obstacle to TVAM's commercial success is the process's unpredictability, often requiring substantial trial and error, with "first-time-right" successes being rare
The MTV project aims to develop hardware and software tools to boost the predictability of TVAM printing processes. This involves creating accurate, robust, and efficient multiphysics computational models of the manufacturing process and the photosensitive resins. Moreover, to evaluate how variations in material properties and processing settings affect the finished product's properties—such as surface resolution, mechanical properties, residual stress, shape precision, and reliability—methodologies for uncertainty quantification and reduced order modelling will be established. The project's achievements will be demonstrated through industrial use cases