The future of additive manufacturing

- Hi there. Welcome back, and welcome back to America Makes. In this segment, I'm joined once again by Kevin Collier and Dr. Amy Elliot from America Makes, and Oak Ridge National Lab. And for this segment, we're really going to start to depart from the current day and look to the future. And what that means is trying to develop an understanding of what the key obstacles are, or enablers are, that need to be created to allow additive manufacturing to continue to flourish and grow as a core technology for businesses to deliver value. I thought we'd do that by asking Kevin and Amy each to share with us a couple of the key issues that additive manufacturing faces as a technology. Kevin, I'd like to begin with you. What do you see as the big barriers that need to fall in order for this technology to progress? - Well, I think, first and foremost, it's the cost of the machines currently and the materials. As more machines, as the technology flourishes or starts to permeate more of the vertical industries, more machines will of course be sold. And of course, competitiveness will bring the costs down. And the same for materials. The speed and throughput is another challenge for the current technologies. As technology starts to mature further, the computers get faster, the process getting a little more defined, those will increase as well. And the traditional attitudes that are currently in industry today, for those people who need to start to think in 3D, three dimensions, and start to adopt those parameters. - Okay. Amy, anything to add to those? - Yeah, I'd like to second what Kevin just said about the attitude, you know, traditionally we do see this as a prototyping technology, but the material properties are good enough that you cannot use these parts as an end use part. - Okay. - But I'd also like to add that we need a more variety of materials. We need a larger variety. We do have a lot of metals to choose from, and polymers, but it'd be great to see more ceramics, more exotic metals, things like copper, with just unique properties that we can't process right now. - Do you see this coming in the near term or in the long term? Or is this yet to be determined? - Researchers are working on these materials right now, but there's a lot of work to do still. - Okay. Anything else? - Yeah. The ease of operation is traditionally a big barrier. With these larger industrial systems, you do need a lot of training and you need someone dedicated, especially with the metal systems, you need a person dedicated to running that machine and gaining that expertise. So the ease of operation definitely needs to be improved. - Where do we think developing talent plays a role here? I mean, both Oak Ridge and America Makes are involved in spreading the word about additive manufacturing. How do we see that skills gap being filled from the bottom up? - I'll take that one. Basically, a lot of times we bring interns in from our membership, as well as local and national universities. So when they come into the lab here, I'll take them through each of the technology that we have in-house. Once they become proficient in a technology, then we move on to the next. Other things we do in the shop here is we bring in workshops, we have work camps, and these are the kind of things that we do to push forward the attitude about additive manufacturing. - And at Oak Ridge, you're doing a lot with FIRST Robotics and STEM? - Right, yeah. So as with America Makes, we work with FIRST Robotics too. We have tons of FIRST Robotics interns, and we have teams that we sponsor and work with. And so this is a really great way to get these 3D printers in their hands. These kids are fluent in 3D printing and additive manufacturing concepts, and they're really going to be the early adopters. They're going to be the ones that really bring this into everyday life. - And the hope is that then that capability grows up and facilitates the greater deployment. - Well, think about this. A typical engineering student may only have a year or two of traditional additive manufacturing before they graduate. But if you can take a desktop printer, a couple thousand dollars investment, now it's a sub thousand dollars, and put this into an eight to 10 year old, think of where they will be in the eight to 10 years as they get into college. They've already worked out the kinks. They're already proficient in all the CAD programming, so they tend to be a little bit better, further ahead of the game. - Terrific. Terrific. Now, one of the issues that I often hear about has to do with materials, once again, seems like that's a theme here, but it has to do with not just the availability of the materials, but the quality of the product that is produced from those materials, both in terms of the performance, that is, "Will it do what I ask it to do," but also in terms of the consistency, that is, "Is this this first part the same as the second part?" Any thoughts on that, Amy? - Right. So we do have strong materials, some high performance materials, but we do have issues with material properties. And what we usually hear from industry is that as long as they get consistent material properties, that's okay. We don't have to have a hundred percent material strength from bulk properties, just as long as we can get consistent, well understood material characterization. That's usually what industry is looking for. - Okay. And so we're not perfect with that, but we expect to be getting better over time? - Right. There are some materials that are really well-qualified, really well understood, but there's a lot that still need to be characterized and tested. - So people should really check for the materials that they're currently using, see if they're available, and then see how consistently they can be deployed using an additive manufacturing technology. - Absolutely. - Terrific. And then a last issue that I see often is intellectual property, right? People seem to have grave concerns about the easy reproducibility of products. And I think we all have a consensus that A, this area of the laws is evolving, and B, none of us is an attorney. And so the best advice is that people should check with theirs. - This changes weekly. - (laughs) This changes weekly. So overall, we've got issues with material, variety, cost, quality, both in terms of performance and in terms of consistency. We've got the speed of the machines that we need to be looking for. We've got the cost of the machines that we have to think about, and we have to watch for how is it we're going about, both within our own organizations and more broadly, how are we developing that talent pool that's going to come up and really carry this technology forward? - [Kevin] And let's not forget that we got to take the traditional attitude and adopt it to three dimensions. - [Mark] Terrific. So that we can understand and make that business case inside our organizations. - Perfect. - Terrific. Well, listen, I want to thank you, Kevin, and thank you, Amy, for all your participation. Not just in this segment, but for really making this a terrific program for everybody, at least I think, and certainly look forward to working with both of you in the future. - My pleasure. - Thanks.