Technophilia

Look out for these in the Blog. Just some of the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head over the last 10 years or more, and I've decided to share with the world. It is intended as open world brain storming, and any one can do what ever they wish with them. If some product developers find inspiration to go take a look at what's happening deep within the particular processes that these ideas touch on, then that would be great. If any one of the growing number of system manufacturers want to consider any of these ideas then that would be wonderful.

Remember these are just my ideas, not intended to be fully conceived solutions, and hopefully not just crazy, naive, or ill conceived codswallop (though, I fully accept that equally they could just be that).

For example, powder bed fusion additive manufacturing techniques suffer from several barriers to gaining acceptability as industrial production techniques. Barriers such as the cost to run the process on the machines themselves, and the uncertainity caused by the lack of in-process quality assurance. All producers want their parts to be consistent and to the required quality for form, fit and function. Control of the latter usually results in the requirement for costly secondary and tertiary quality control processes. These are nearly always carried out after a part has been built. Whilst one of the largest contributors to process cost is determined by the time taken to scan one layer, and that is a step that usually a has a significant amount of non-production time.

Could changes to the AM technology improve this?

Almost certainly they could!

Anyway, it could just be the right time to push aside the cloaks and daggers, the smoke and mirrors, that have hindered the adoption of additive manufacturing, to hopefully help to foster the level of collaboration in the industry that is needed to make AM a real industrial success story. So within the blog you may find several technology ideas that could, if practically achievable, lead to significant process improvements, cost benefits, and greater sustainability.

Probably!