Research & Education
Additive manufacturing is transforming how products are designed, produced, and serviced. AM lets us produce on-demand, without dedicated equipment or tooling. This unparalleled flexibility enables new digital design and production tools that can create components and products with breakthrough performance: in order to truly unlock the potential of AM, research & education is of fundamental importance.
Knowledge of the fundamentals of AM, its design principles, applications, and implications is one of the greatest barriers to its wider adoption. In recent years the key importance of integrating additive manufacturing in educational curricula has begun to be considered worldwide.
Additive manufacturing centered research & education initiatives by both governments and corporations – as well as individuals – have begun to focus on raising the next generation of additive manufacturing designers and engineers.
The main areas of exploration for educational activities are in software and hardware. While AM hardware learning is currently mostly limited to exploring the current additive production process and its applications, software offers some of the most significant opportunities in terms of learning to fully exploit the AM process in the future.