Under the title "The Industrial Perspective of Additive Manufacturing", the Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC invited an international audience of experts for the fifth time from October 17-19. As before, the focus was on the field of 3D printing of metallic components.
Although there are countless specialist conferences on the subject of 3D printing, the MAMC stands out in that it does not focus on printing as such, but on the properties of the printed materials. This special focus is also guaranteed by the numerous participating universities, not only from Europe, but this year in particular with strong participation from Japan. While most of the participants came from the DACH region, a separate block of lectures by British speakers, for example, underlined the international orientation of the event.
Bastian Bartel (AM Power) probably gave the best overview of the state of the technology and the development of the industry in his plenary presentation. On the one hand, the segment has not been able to meet the expectations set a few years ago. The economic forecast was mostly supported by the system manufacturers and fell well short of the forecasts.
As Dr. Seidel (Pankl Racing Systems) said so aptly in his presentation: The hype is over - lets get to work! On the other hand, the proportion of manufactured industrial products has increased significantly, meaning that the industry is moving away from the production of prototypes and test parts from R&D towards production series - a step that is vital for the continued existence of the technology. Even more recent forecasts, all of which are still optimistic, are based on data from industrial production. This is also reflected in the trend towards ever larger 3D printers. In addition to the established European manufacturers and their American competitors, more and more Asian manufacturers are entering the market as a result, and strong predatory competition is to be expected in the coming years (or feared from a European perspective).
A separate block of presentations with speakers from Japan showed very clearly that Asia recognizes the importance of the technologies and is driving their further development.
There were hardly any new material developments to be found in the numerous presentations. Instead, there is a growing understanding of existing materials, their properties and the relationships between the printing parameters and the resulting material structures. This is an essential prerequisite for further industrial implementation, and fortunately progress here is significant.
Post-processing played a surprisingly subordinate role at this conference. While external surfaces no longer seem to pose a problem thanks to a combination of mechanical and electrochemical processes, complex structures and internal surfaces still remain a challenge that is sometimes impossible to solve. However, a study presented at the conference and supported by the EU on the subject of inner surfaces comes to the conclusion that only electrochemical (galvanic) processes such as electropolishing can solve this problem.
