PLA became a favorite 3D printing material because people thought it was safer than ABS, since it didn’t give you headaches. And being made from plants, it felt safer and greener too. We all know now that this is not true. But, it prints so well. And people thought that PLA was weak initially, brittle, […]
Demand for satellites continues to grow, and manufacturers are looking for ways to build spacecraft faster without affecting performance. One way to do that is to involve manufacturing companies earlier in the design process. Fortastra, a California company developing spacecraft for national security and commercial missions, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with advanced
Kalogon has brought the Verro to market. This is a 3D printed wheelchair cushion, made with vat polymerization technology. Using a variable density lattice, it hopes to give wheelchair users more comfort. Kalogon makes regular wheelchair seats and seats for military aircraft in the US. The new cushion will come in two models: the Verro
The entry-level laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) polymer space is heating up. Whereas in metals it’s Chinese vendors offering breakthrough low-cost products, in polymer it’s HP and Formlabs enabling easier, lower CapEx entry into the market. For traditional low-cost sintering companies, this offers up a bit of a strategic conundrum. What to do? Do you
After years in which the additive manufacturing (AM) industry gained a reputation for its hype outpacing its performance, an interesting development has emerged recently. In certain market segments, at least, the reality has started to reflect the forecasts. While there’s much we can learn, for instance, from how AM adoption has proceeded in the defense
Spain’s IMDEA Materials Institute has worked with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to detect and identify differences in different 3D printers. This could be important in eliminating run-to-run differences in prints and printers. It could make it easier to print the same part with the same performance in Wellington and Medellin.That could make 3D printing for MRO
Kyle Bass has spent much of his career looking at big economic trends before everyone else does. The founder of Hayman Capital Management became famous for betting against the U.S. housing market before the 2008 financial crisis, a move that put him among a small group of investors who saw the crisis coming before most
Published in the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, a paper titled “Part scale prediction of residual stress through thermomechanical modeling of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V” seems to point to the benefits of using PanOptimization. So named for founder Pan Michaleris, and not for the goat-legged god of shepherds, or indeed the cooking utensil, PanOptimization is
Overall, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry has stayed impressively restrained in terms of trying to leverage any potential coattail hype from the AI boom. Perhaps the leading enterprises left standing after the collapse of previous hype cycles are those most likely to proceed with caution under such circumstances. It’s not as if there are no
In this series, we’re using cutting-edge AI research tools, including an unreleased deep research tool to look at the desktop 3D printing filament market. We’re then comparing it with our known data to see where AI research tools make sense, and where (and how) they make mistakes. The idea is to at the same time
