ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
AM techniques have moved beyond product design
and prototyping to support production at scale
COMING OF AGE
The additive manufacturing market is growing and changing, but analyst Sona Dadhania has high hopes for the future. By Nicola Brittain
A
recent webinar hosted by US-based consultancy company IDTEchEX reviewed current trends
in the additive manufacturing (AM) sector and argued that although expectations might have been overblown, innovations in technology and maturation of the market will turn AM into a services industry with a much larger customer base than it currently serves.
TRENDS IN AM Sona Dadhania, senior technology analyst at the company, delivered a mutedly hopeful presentation on the future of the AM market. On the upside, Dadhania outlined new hardware innovations coming to market as well as the use of metal powder in AM which she said would
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broaden the likely application of the technology considerably. She also explained that widespread automation and digitisation were lowering the barriers to entry across the entire supply chain and that larger companies were increasingly developing proprietary technology for in-house use, further expanding the AM infrastructure and use cases. One example of a company to
have developed its own in-house AM production capacity using concrete is India-based company MiCoB which supplies to sectors including civil, military, and decoration. In addition the analyst explained that an increasing number of 3D printing companies were experimenting with a scalable service or leasing model for their industrial customers. Dadhania also gave an overview
of the most interesting start-ups in the space, explaining that many are using new printing methods as well as iterations on established technologies. The techniques she cited were rapid liquid printing, dynamic moulding, and volumetric additive manufacturing (VAM).
RAPID LIQUID PRINTING Originally developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) self-assembly lab, Rapid liquid printing draws a liquid object in three dimensions within a gel suspension. The object sets while printing and is ready for use with minimal post- processing. The technique can also deliver large-scale objects from high-grade materials such as rubber, foam, and plastic in a matter of minutes. The
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