3D Printing is one of the most promising new manufacturing technologies today, with many applications already and the promise of many more in the future. However, while today's 3D Printing processes can produce parts with very complex geometries, they are slow, rough, and difficult to inspect and this limits their use in industrially-relevant applications. Support will provided for the participation of leading US researchers in 3D Printing in discussions aimed at identifying promising breakthrough approaches to improving 3D Printing with leading researchers from the UK. These workshops will be held in conjunction with two of the leading annual conferences focused on 3DP, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has huge potential, but currently has technological limitations, including slow build speed, poor surface finish, limited ability of conventional inspection methods to characterize complex AM parts, requirements for temporary support structures that must be removed after process completion, and often poor energy efficiency. Two workshops are proposed, the first on July 7, 2014, the day before the 9th International Conference of Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing in Nottingham, UK, and the second on August 7, 2014, the day following the 25th International Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) Symposium in Austin, Texas. These workshops will bring together leading researchers in the US and the UK for focused discussions on identifying breakthrough approaches to addressing the limitations in current AM processes.
