The ASCAMM Foundation has as its mission increasing the competitiveness of companies and organisations in the metal and plastic processing sectors as a whole and particularly within the mould and die industry.

The ASCAMM Foundation is ISO 9001 certified and operates a leading-edge technology centre located near Barcelona (Spain) with nearly 100 employees, mainly engineering graduates, and provides services in the fields of plastic, metal and special tooling. The main activities of ASCAMM Technology Centre are the following: Applied R&D; Projects, Specialised Technical and Professional Training, Product & Process Engineering, Injection Mould Testing, Dimensional Metrology, Technical Consulting and Technology Transfer.::::

The premises of the technology centre have 6,000 square metres of built space with top-level technical facilities and equipment. These comprise nine injection moulding machines from 40Tm up to 2.800Tm clamping force, a plastic materials laboratory, a rapid prototyping machine, complete CAD/CAM/CAE capability, including computer simulation of the injection moulding process, complete metal machining workshops, including two high speed milling centres, and dimensional metrology.

The ASCAMM Foundation is a member of FEDIT (Spanish Federation for Innovation and Technology Entities) and has been recognised by the CICYT (Spanish Interministry Commission of Science and Technology) as a Centre of Innovation and Technology (CIT) and as an Office for the Transfer of Research Results (OTRI). It is also a founding member of the OPTI Foundation (Prospective Observatory for Industrial Technology), acting as the leader centre in the metal and plastic processing sectors.

ASCAMM Technology Centre was created in 1987 by the Association of Mould & Die Manufacturers of Catalonia (ASCAMM) and in 1996 it became a separate, independent, legal entity under the legal form of a private, non-profit foundation.

The Association of Mould and Die Manufacturers of Catalonia currently has 216 associated companies, all SME’s representing over 70% of the business in this sector in Catalonia and almost 30% of total business in Spain. These companies employ over 4000 highly qualified technicians and engineers and make use of the most advanced design and production equipment. The Association of Mould and Die Manufacturers of Catalonia is a founding member of FEAMM (Spanish Federation of Mould & Die Manufacturers’ Associations) and holds its secretariat and is currently the seat for the secretariat of ISTMA-Europe (European Division of the International Special Tooling & Machining Association).

ASCAMM Foundation is a partner in ten European running projects and is also involved in more than 20 projects funded by Spanish RTD support programmes, either as the leader or as a technical partner. Previously, it was a partner in a Brite-Euram project (ECOPROD), an EC Innovation project (CLUB RP) and a Leonardo project, and was the leading partner in two ADAPT projects (Tecnoevolucion and EVE). Since 1993 ASCAMM has taken part in almost 80 RTD projects. Right now we participate as leading partner in an Interreg project (IntPlastic), an IP-SME (Eurotooling 21) and an ETI (Plasteam) and as partner in 3 Collective Research projects, 2 Thematic Networks, one EQUAL and one SSA (As IAG and/or RTD).

The position of ASCAMM Technology Centre is at the centre-point of industry and technology, dealing with projects and services related to product, process and tooling alike. ASCAMM has consolidated experience in participating and managing both national and European co-operative projects, even complex ones.