What RAPID + TCT Revealed About Additive Manufacturing’s Most Urgent OpportunityÂ
Earlier this month, SMRT’s Nick Hadiaris and I attended RAPID + TCT in Boston, North America’s largest additive manufacturing conference. The show floor covered the full spectrum: large-scale aerospace components, boat hull tooling, industrial molds, materials innovation across polymers and metals. The breadth of what additive manufacturing can do today is well-documented. The more pressing question, at least from…
The Factory of the Future Needs a Building to Match
In 2022, the University of Maine (UMaine) printed a house. A 600-square-foot home, built from wood fiber and bio-resin, printed in two days and assembled on-site in half a day. The floors, walls, and roof are all fully recyclable and were produced by the world’s largest 3D polymer printer at the UMaine campus in Orono. That project, BioHome3D,…
Microelectronics Facility Design: Precision, Performance, and Purpose-Built Flexibility
Microelectronics technology touches nearly every aspect of modern life – from smartphones and satellites to medical imaging machines and wine coolers. Inside many day-to-day items we maytake for granted is a computer chip, and behind each chip is a purpose-built space, a fab, where precision and control drive performance. A typical fab has HEPA-filtered air,…