Todd Grimm - headshotnew
Additive manufacturing (AM) presents a wide variety of technologies to help us achieve our goals.
Far from being stagnant, this dynamic industry continues to offer an ever-increasing list of options. But this falls in the category of ‘too much of a good thing’. With so many options, it can be quite overwhelming, and sometimes a bit confusing, when attempting to absorb and comprehend all of the technologies available. However, having a firm grasp on the AM landscape is critical in making the best decisions, which are supported by deep investigation of the technological candidates.
To maintain control, and to perhaps preserve your sanity, I suggest that you consider the bucket-list approach. In the everyday context, a bucket list is an optimistic roster of actions or dreams to fulfil before one’s time ends. For AM, I am suggesting a bucket list that is expansive while being practical and sensible. I am suggesting a method, one that I have had to use out of necessity, for organising and managing the vast number of AM solutions.
The bucket list is a categorisation system that helps you to retain all the options that you are exposed to while keeping you focused on those that present the best opportunities to succeed. It has just three buckets into which AM solutions are deposited. The first bucket, ‘Investigate’, holds the options that are of high interest and are to be actively pursued through investigation. The second bucket, ‘Monitor’, contains the options that are worthy of further consideration at some time in the future. The third bucket, ‘Ignore’, is for all others. If done wisely, this approach should remove 75%, or more, of the options from your active consideration.
Using my personal criteria, Ignore includes poorly differentiated me-too products and those that I don’t believe have much promise. Monitor is where I place interesting solutions that I believe need a bit more time to mature and advance. Investigate is for those solutions that are commercially viable and ready for general release to the industry. I recommend that you also use technology readiness as a factor in determining which bucket to place a solution. However, all of my other criteria will not work for you since they must be defined by your needs, goals and applications.
Before you start your bucket list, decide what is important, what is critical and what would be nice to have. Make these decisions with consideration of your intended applications and product types coupled with the needed materials, output characteristics and performance traits. With this clarity, you can now start your bucket list by contemplating your requirements with respect to what a solution is known to offer. Then, as you are exposed to new companies, new machines, new materials, and new software, pause for a moment and reflect on whether they should be Investigated, Monitored, or Ignored.
It is tempting to get caught in ‘paralysis by analysis’ as you drop items in the respective buckets, but don’t over-analyse and overthink. Instead, rely on your intuition and what you know to be true. Organisation is what is important, not perfection, because your bucket list will evolve as new information comes forward. An item that currently resides in the Ignore bucket is not lost forever; it can be moved when new information presents itself.
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Using the bucket list, you will have command of the AM landscape while focusing attention on what matters most. It provides rationale to what can be ignored or investigated later for peace of mind, sanity and confidence. It is also a great defence of your approach when someone, often in upper management, inserts themselves into your AM efforts after reading the latest headline and asking if your have considered this new solution. Simply turn to them and state that you have taken a look at it, but it does not deserve further attention and support that statement with your one sentence rationale.
There are many paths to AM success. A good bucket list separates the dead ends and arduous paths from the easiest and most direct routes.
