My least favourite question to be asked at a trade show is, “So, seen anything good?” I often don’t know the answer until I’ve unpacked my suitcase and had a chance to mull over notes, listen back to interviews and digest. Now, it’s getting even harder. Not because I haven’t seen anything good, it’s more that the definition of what ‘good’ is has changed.
For me, what used to be a common case of trade show tunnel vision – that is, beelining for the stands promising big product launches, crowds, and therefore, the best breakfast buffet – has turned into a bout of trade show blindness, in that, I haven’t really seen an awful lot lately.
And I’m kind of okay with it.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot off the back of this year's RAPID + TCT where news from the show floor in Detroit was largely about partnerships or new materials developments, not bigger and bolder machines. Now, going into TCT 3Sixty – as I type, just two weeks today, yikes! – where the UK market isn’t exactly churning out a piece of new hardware every six months, I think it’s important to get some perspective.
When I started at TCT Magazine, before trade shows became calendar markers for my year, like bank holidays or half term, you could walk into an exhibit hall, stick on a blindfold, spin around ten times and stop with your finger pointed at some new piece of machinery. Now, you’ve got to have your eyes wide open.
In my recent conversation with Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, CEO of Materialise for our Additive Insight podcast, she doubled down on the notion of AM being a ‘slow revolution’, commenting that, “We've always said it's going to be a slow revolution, and it is. But it's still a revolution.” She suggests patience and a vision for the long-term, and I think that’s where we’re at. This industry is not standing still, and industrial revolutions don't happen overnight. Yes, it's been a bleak few years - if I never have to decode another line of corporate speak for 'staff cuts', I'll be happy - but the lack of new machinery or pomp isn't something to feel gloomy about. We’re just actually using the machines we've got, and isn't that the point? When I toured Materialise earlier this month, I felt a jolt of nostalgia spotting old OEM logos stamped onto some older equipment, still happily churning out parts. In fact, it's a familiar sight whenever I visit these sorts of facilities. I'm not saying there's no need to innovate, but when the technology works, what users want is scale, repeatability, productivity and so on.
We talk a lot about hype, and, given this is our AI issue, I’ve asked a lot of folks in AM whether we risk hyping up AI in a similar fashion, only for it not to live up to expectations. As you’ll read here, Backflip founder Greg Mark isn’t worried about that. He believes it's totally different. And I'm inclined to agree. When my friend uses AI to find recipe ideas, he doesn’t care about chips or algorithms. He just wants an easy interface to give him a decent recipe for dinner. I kind of feel the same about AM. Does anyone really care that a machine has 100 lasers? No, they just want it to do what it says it’s going to do.
Good is not how big your build size is or shooting hoops with novelty lightweight basketballs. Good is getting aerospace-certified parts out of those large build volumes or using lightweight structures to reduce CO2 emissions. Good is cutting out the laborious step of post-processing with automation features or reducing the number of software tools you need to get a part from your brain and onto a build plate.
So, my advice to you the next time you find yourself perusing a trade show hall, looking for that next ‘big thing’, rock up to a booth and ask: ‘Tell me something that I simply have to see’. An engineer might say something like ‘Well, it’s not flashy, but I like it,’ and proceed to show you an automotive jig with a barcode embedded that’s only made possible because of a certain material development, or a part that's not strictly AI but has been used to build AI infrastructure. They're use cases that, okay, might never warrant a 400-word press release, but they're the sort of 'good' I'm looking for.
