Hidria’s project COMBILASER successfully passed the last, final testing by the European Commission auditors in Brussels. The three-year project in the area of laser manufacturing technologies was the first one coordinated by Hidria. It brought together 12 European partners who received EUR 3 million in total for the development activities.

Hidria team invested a lot of efforts in the demanding work which required continuous coordination of development and administrative activities and reporting to the European Commission on the progress of work and achievement of project goals. For three years, it has been efficiently managed by the technical project coordinator Tomaž Munih and administrative coordinator Tanja Mohorič. In addition to that, many other colleagues from Hidria AET development department and Hidria’s project office also helped with the activities.

Besides the coordination, Hidria AET also contributed its own industrial challenge to the project. It upgraded laser manufacturing technologies at high-technological manufacturing lines in Tolmin, intended for the manufacturing of diesel engine cold start system with pressure sensor - Hidria OPTYMUS PSG. Hidria AET’s project partners developed state-of-the-art technological solutions in the area of spectral monitoring, non-destructive tests using laser ultrasound, and the biggest achievement was the development of self-learning algorithm that enables machine learning on previous errors and results in zero-failure manufacturing.

The above-mentioned top solutions are a significant competitive advantage for Hidria, since they are better and cheaper than the comparable, existing solutions on the market, or since there are no viable alternatives for them available on the market. With the implementation of these solutions, Hidria AET managed to significantly reduce the amount of scrap and accelerate the start (SOP) of the industrialisation of the OPTYMUS PSG which is about to start. In addition to the achievements on the scientific and technological level, development contacts established during the project implementation are also extremely important for Hidria.

In the final phase of the COMBILASER project, Hidria’s developers identified potential new development topics that could be further upgraded with the project partners - either in the form of bilateral projects or through new European tenders. Let us mention that Hidria’s success in the project was complemented by the SiEVA Development Centre which participated as project promoter. One of the contributions of DC SiEVA is the COMBILASER project video.