Greater access to knowledge and information is going to be key as additive manufacturing climbs out of the ‘trough of disillusionment’ according to industry consultant Jonathan Rowley.
Rowley made the assertion on the latest episode of the Additive Insight podcast, in which he was joined by Blake Courter, the Chairperson of LatticeRobot, in the latest of our Innovators on Innovators series.
The pair suggest on the podcast that, when referencing the Gartner Hype Cycle, additive manufacturing is deep in the trough of disillusionment and at best ‘creeping up the other side’ towards the ‘slope of enlightenment’. It is in this context that both Rowley and Courter have felt compelled to get involved with efforts to facilitate knowledge share and access to information.
“Everybody has been talking about the potential [3D printing] holds. I’ve been involved with this for ten years and I’m sick of waiting for the potential,” Rowley said. “Things need to be activated and agglomerated and disseminated so that we can all move forward on the back of each other’s experience.”
As a result, Rowley has set up AM Manifest, an online platform which seeks to understand the level of competency of the user as well as the project being worked on, before using machine learning to provide a palette of starter technology ingredients that will allow the user to ‘design something they can reasonably expect will produce the results they’re looking for.’
LatticeRobot, meanwhile, facilitates the research, discoverability and interopability of lattice structures. It has been set up to address a lack of knowledge around how lattice structures can be best deployed in 3D printed products, with users able to share designs and explore new lattice structures.
Between them, the two offerings provide a sandbox for engineers to learn, while also allowing them to take strides towards providing solutions and bringing professionals together as part of a community. The result, they hope, is more skilled, better equipped engineers who can move the additive manufacturing industry forwards.
“It’s the time to do the hard work,” Courter said. “It’s perfectly normal, I think, for folks like you and me who’ve been around the block once or twice to say ‘enough is enough’. I may not know everything, but this is how we get things done and we’re going to share that in some way that is hopefully meaningful to people.”
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