Editorial

Citation

Campbell, I. (2009), "Editorial", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 15 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/rpj.2009.15615eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Rapid Prototyping Journal, Volume 15, Issue 5

Last week I attended the Rapid Manufacturing Conference at Loughborough University and, once again, it was full of excellent presentations from very knowledgeable speakers. In particular, Professor David Bourell from the University of Texas at Austin gave an extremely valuable talk that summarised the findings of the Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing Workshop which was held at the National Science Foundation headquarters in Arlington, Virginia on 30-31 March 2009. The workshop was co-organized by Dave, Ming Leu of the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and Dave Rosen from Georgia Tech. It was attended by 65 people from universities, industry and the US Government, and had the goal of “defining a future path for expeditious development of freeform technologies”. The event was supported by funding from National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

In his presentation, Dave presented the rationale behind the workshop, how it was actually conducted and a summary of the outcomes that were generated. The workshop addressed two key questions:

1. 1.

   Where will/should additive manufacturing (AM) be in ten to 15 years?

2. 2.

   In what ways can research accelerate or enlighten progress towards this?

Prior to attending the workshop, participants were invited to submit two-page discussion documents on what the future of AM might be and how research might impact the path to that future. The workshop began with four keynote briefing presentations from leading experts on the topics of “Commercial applications and direct digital manufacturing”, “Bioengineering and medicine”, “Energy and sustainability” and “Materials”. This was followed by breakout sessions were participants identified barriers, milestones and trends for a range of AM topics. The outputs from these sessions fed through into the seven main chapters of the report, which are as follows:

1. 1.

   Industry targets.

2. 2.

   Technology goals and barriers.

3. 3.

   Design and analysis.

4. 4.

   Processes and machines.

5. 5.

   Materials and materials processing.

6. 6.

   Biotechnology.

7. 7.

   Energy and sustainability.

The detailed recommendations for each of these topics are too numerous to be reported here so Rapid Prototyping Journal readers are strongly encouraged to read the full report, which Terry Wohlers has kindly made available at: www.wohlersassociates.com/roadmap2009.html. Anyone desiring a CD or hard copy version of the full report may obtain one gratis by e-mailing a request to: sffsymp@uts.cc.utexas.edu

The preface to the report states that “it is arguable that the outcome (of the workshop) is more a research agenda than a Roadmap, per se. Nonetheless, we are convinced that the results of this effort serve to define a direction for AM research pointing our best understanding of where the technology needs to be in the midterm”. As such, the report has a significant role to play not just in the AM research community in the USA, but also right around the world. Recommendations from the report can feed directly into research questions and projects, where-ever they are being undertaken. Dave and all the participants in the workshop are to be congratulated on their efforts which should have a significant impact upon the future of AM research activity.

Extracts have been taken from the Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing report edited by David L. Bourell (The University of Texas at Austin), Ming C. Leu (Missouri University of Science and Technology) and David W. Rosen (Georgia Institute of Technology), published by the University of Texas at Austin.

Ian Campbell