This award provides student support for the Twenty-Second International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium to be held August 8-10, 2011 in Austin, Texas. The meeting is comprised of plenary and parallel session technical presentations and a poster session. There is ample time allotted for informal interactions of world-class researchers and students in formal meeting settings and also at informal social events during the meeting. Approximately 150 persons will attend, with approximately 50 of these participants being students. The two "FAME" awards will be given for the third time. The first is a senior award called the "Freeform and Additive Manufacturing Excellence" (FAME) Award. The second is an award to recognize researchers early in their career, the Award for "Outstanding Young Research in Freeform and Additive Manufacturing". There will also be a special session on sustainability and additive manufacturing. The conference will bring together world experts in the area to update and extend their understanding of advances in the technology. All meeting papers will be published in a conference proceedings to be distributed to all participants including students. The award will support approximately 50 students.
This conference is a mechanism for transfer and dissemination of knowledge and understanding in the field of additive, freeform manufacturing. It is a model for advancing discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training and learning. The networking of world-class researchers with students is strong. The meeting is a pinion for research infrastructure. Through the heavily cited proceedings, information is widely disseminated to an extensive network of researchers and students around the world. The societal impact includes identification of pre-commercial technologies and sharing of information pertaining to freeform fabrication that will eventually be developed and implemented into machines and processes that will enhance domestic productivity.
This project supported student participation in the Twenty-First International Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) Symposium. The symposium took place on August 8-10, 2011 in Austin, Texas at The University of Texas at Austin. Funds offset student registrations which enabled students to come and participate. There were 63 students at the meeting which represented approximately 40% of the entire meeting participation. The meeting had 77 oral presentations and 18 poster presentations. Seventy four papers were included in the proceedings. Authors had an option to have their papers peer reviewed prior to publication. Intellectual Merit The Twenty-First International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, held at The University of Texas at Austin on August 8-10, 2011, was attended by 159 national and international researchers. The Symposium was organized in a manner to allow the multidisciplinary nature of the SFF research to be presented coherently, with various sessions emphasizing computer interfacing and modeling, machine and process development and materials and materials processing for SFF. The three-day event was completely composed of individual oral presentations to accommodate the demand for this dissemination format. The parallel sessions were split into three sessions to meet demand, and a poster session allowed researchers to present in this format. We believe that documenting the changing state of SFF art as represented by the meeting proceedings serves both the people presently involved in this fruitful technical area as well as the flux of new researchers and users entering the field. In 2011, a special plenary session was organized on sustainability in additive manufacturing. Speakers were leading experts in the field. Information on the SFF Symposium was made available through the worldwide web at http://utwired.engr.utexas.edu.lff/. On-line registration forms, hotel information, general information brochure, proceedings order form, maps and the previous year’s talk titles were all available. The SFF Symposium mailing address is sffsymp@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Broader Impacts In addition to the benefits of direct meeting participation, students were able to network with the international additive manufacturing research community. Wider dissemination was accomplished through the proceedings. A total of 74 papers were included in the proceedings volume. Authors contributed manuscripts both unreviewed and reviewed to allow authors the option of presenting their work in a refereed format. The SFF Symposium serves as a primary forum for networking and dissemination of information dealing with research issues in freeform fabrication. According to Ian Campbell, senior editor of the Rapid Prototyping Journal, "The SFF Symposium is to be regarded as the foremost international conference for rapid prototyping research." RPJ, 9#1, 2003. Additive Manufacturing is an extremely broad and interdisciplinary field, encompassing mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science and engineering, biology, design, materials science and engineering, manufacturing science. The topics covered at the SFF symposium impact the automotive, aerospace, orthopedics, dentistry, gaming, surgical planning, implants, marine, architecture, furniture, art, etc. The 2011 conference served as a forum for this diverse interdisciplinary group of researchers to gather for the purpose of synergistic interaction and sharing of ideas and progress. The SFF Symposium brings together students, faculty and research scientists to interact in areas related to freeform fabrication. Details of student involvement are described elsewhere in the NSF project final report. The Proceedings of the Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium is a significant contribution to the research literature in the field. The proceedings represent a concise annual corpus of 600-1000 pages detailing research in freeform fabrication back to 1990. The proceedings are heavily cited in archival literature including the Rapid Prototyping Journal. This year, the SFF Proceedings were uploaded in their entirety onto the conference website, providing citation-based access to all manuscripts from 1990-2011 (http://utwired.engr.utexas.edu/lff/symposium/proceedingsArchive/toc.cfm). This conference serves as a meeting opportunity for researchers, a number of which are involved to varying degrees in entrepreneurial activities. The networking aspect of the conference is strong and includes students who are able to meet and discuss research with world-class leading experts in the field.
