TCT
Rounding out this morning's session on the Insights Stage at TCT 3Sixty, ASTM International's Additive Manufacturing Project Engineer Lauren Ednie asked a panel of speakers a very good question: 'What's your prediction for additive manufacturing in 2040?'
The 3D printing industry has had it's fair share of lofty predictions and hype: a 3D printer in every home (even one in every home at one point), fast revolutions, and figures that have never quite materialised. The panel session, hosted by platinum sponsor ASTM, 'Back to the Future: Did We Get Our Predictions Right, and What Comes Next for Additive Manufacturing?', began with honest reflections from each panelist on their own, perhaps overambitious, predictions they'd made about AM over the last 10-15 years. But as a week at the UK's largest additive manufacturing event has cemented, the hype is more or less gone and people are getting serious about the reality and application of additive manufacturing technologies.
Read more:
- ASTM International takes centre stage at the home of additive manufacturing in the UK
- ASTM International's Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence launches new manufacturer certification program
That doesn't mean we shouldn't still get excited, however, and our panelists didn't hold back on their future AM predictions. So, for anyone unable to join us today in Birmingham, I figured I'd publish a quick recap of what each speaker shared as a time capsule of sorts, which we can hopefully crack open in an another 15 years and say, yes, we got that right.
Martin White, Director - Technical Operations, Global Advanced Manufacturing at ASTM International
'We will be on Mars and additive manufacturing will have helped us to get there.'
Eddie Andrews, Commercial Director at 3T Additive Manufacturing
"The AM model business model, but as a franchise ... the combination of additive with subtractive in one place, having the digital and the automation wrapped around that, but then instead of having 300 companies all doing a different flavour of what they think it looks like, you're setting one generic model and saying that's what the optimum way of doing this looks like."
Daniel Johns, CEO at 3T Additive Manufacturing
"Metal additive manufacturing near net shape consumes a lot less material so I think by 2040 we'll understand that, leverage that more. I think additive will just be part of a value chain in any metal manufacturing."
Jonathan Meyer, CEO at APWORKS
"My prediction is that there'll be no one sitting on a stage like this talking about additive manufacturing in 20 years time because it'll just be another technology, just like all the others."
Louise Slade, Chief Operating Officer, Deep Manufacturing
"I'd be remiss not to say in 20, 30 years there'll be a human community on the seabed, living in an additively manufactured habitat."
