- What does the Future of Manufacturing mean to you and your company?
A collision of technology: automation, robotics, multi-disciplinary engineering, and artificial intelligence. The days of pushing buttons and labor-intensive processing are behind us. The future winners will have the scale of technology protected by a massive engineering barrier.
- Sustainability is the latest buzz word. How is your organization embracing it?
The first thing we melted was scrap titanium and our first paying customer required us to recycle steel, stainless, copper, titanium, and aluminum scrap. Sustainability has been fundamental to our existence. We envision metal recycling to Additive Manufacturing as a true circular economy enabler. Recycling today’s waste to print tomorrow’s parts.
- Industry 4.0 – where is this Revolution leading towards?
Process automation and continuous improvement driven by data. Site-to-site repeatability and global scalability.
- What are the key factors to consider in adopting technologies to achieve a Digital Manufacturing Environment?
First, we think digitally followed by architect our engineering solution to our digital strategy. Our first printed parts had paper travelers to record the manufacturing data; unfortunately, the paper travelers got dirty, wasted resources, and were prone to error. Today we use digital signatures such as QR codes for incoming scrap to our final part. Even our printed parts (dumb metal) become portal to the digital world when scanned.
- Please share your take on the process and trends of AM Material and importance materials development for AM adoption.
Material selection and cost will improve with metal recycling technology. Locally recycling accelerates adoption by assuring the desired alloys are made, traditional machined parts with high scrap rates be evaluated with AM, and immediate availability of AM grade powder. New alloys which are designed specifically for additive manufacturing will become the normal and outperforming traditional alloys.
- What can be done to further expand the potential of 3D Printing?
Trust in the industry, simplified qualification, and drastic increase in printer productivity per dollar of CapEx.