Democenter

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are emerging as foundational tools for transparency, traceability, and sustainability in global supply chains. As regulatory initiatives such as the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) gain momentum, there is increasing demand for technical solutions that support decentralised management and retrieval of product lifecycle data. This paper proposes a lightweight, extensible architecture centred on the DPP Protocol—a general-purpose communication mechanism for interoperable access to product information. The approach is particularly suited to fragmented or highly variable production contexts, such as fashion and other sectors characterised by short product lifecycles, complex supply networks, and limited digital infrastructure. We present two complementary implementations: the DPP Software, a server-side system for managing product data, and the DPP Browser, a stateless client for visualising and querying digital passports. Together, these components demonstrate the feasibility and versatility of the proposed protocol. The solution emphasises interoperability, recursive querying, and role-based access control, offering a foundation for scalable adoption across diverse industrial and regulatory settings.

Laser-diode self-mixing interferometry is a noncontact technique widely used both in industries and laboratories. In this paper, we propose to extend the self-mixing approach to low-coherence sources such as superluminescent diodes. In particular, we present a fiber-based common-path interferometer exploiting a single-mode-pigtailed superluminescent diode. The developed measuring system has been demonstrated to be able to directly measure the flow in pipes. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that flow measurements have been performed by a single-arm self-mixing pigtailed superluminescent-diode. The measuring system exploits the Doppler interference pattern produced by the light back-reflected from the inner facet of the pipe wall and the light back-diffused by the moving particles. Then, the use of a low-coherence source allows to measure the velocity of the scattering particles in a fixed and well-defined region located close to the pipe wall, thus providing good robustness to variations of scatterers concentration and allowing to easily estimate the flow under the laminar flow assumption. Experimental results demonstrated a high linearity (Pearson coefficient of about 99%) and sensitivity of about 16.62 ± 1.1 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-3</sup> , with flows ranging from 1 to 15 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> /s and scatterers volume concentration ranging from 0.015 to 0.36%.

Rapid Prototyping and Tooling (RP&T) technologies are applied extensively and intensively in the industry and their importance is increasing because it reduces the development time and cost required for product prototyping and injection moulding dies and EDM electrodes tooling. Namely additive technologies are getting interest due to the possibility to build a component by adding material. The paper addresses the study and application of Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) of copper alloys for Rapid Tooling of dies for thermoplastic polymer injection moulding. Specific samples have been designed by CAD, in order to be representative of the geometrical and morphological features and functional characteristics of the dies. The main limitations of DMLS prototypes are relevant to surface properties as porosity, roughness, hardness, corrosion, erosion and wear resistance. The study takes into consideration the characterization and improvement of DMLS surface properties in order to meet their functional requirements. To this purpose, different surface treatments have been studied and applied, as blasting and peening, resin infiltration, electroless nickel plating. Sample surfaces has been fully characterized and analysed, as obtained by DMLS, and after surface treatments. 3D surface roughness and microgeometrical morphology and porosity and microhardness properties have been systematically investigated.

PLC-based systems are commonly designed according to a two-phase process: the system structure is conceived and detailed by the electro-mechanical project team, then the control project team is asked to design and develop the control software. Because of product complexity, different culture of the two teams, lack of supports to requirement specification and communication, and other problems, the design process presents heavy, costs and times. The paper aims at presenting an approach for bridging the gap between the two design environments. It adapts and integrates two techniques resulting from European Union funded projects: a family-based product modelling technique from the ESPRIT project 8224-RUMS (used in the structural design phase) and an object-oriented PLC specification language from the ESPRIT/ESSI project 10542-EASIER (used in the software design phase).