Executive Editor, Additive Manufacturing Media | Co-host, The Cool Parts Show & AM Radio podcast
Generative design is a powerful tool for rapidly developing geometries for additive manufacturing. Does it also prepare additive manufacturers for pivots in production? 🔽 An interesting study published by Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) came through my inbox today looking at how additive manufacturing users applied their capacity during Covid-19. Researchers surveyed 34 firms three times between 2020 and 2022; half of the participating companies pivoted AM resources toward the production of pandemic-response items such as swabs and ventilators components while the other half did not. (If you were following me or Additive Manufacturing Media back in 2020, you might have seen some of those pivots play out in our coverage, like the 3D printed covid test swabs pictured that were produced by a collection of different companies. 📼 https://bit.ly/3wwq52C) 🔑Interestingly, the companies in the study that successfully made the pivot used a variety of 3D printing techniques and came from a variety of industries. (In other words, it wasn’t all medical manufacturers!) Instead, the factor that they seemed to have in common was familiarity with and use of generative design. The full paper is worth a read: https://lnkd.in/gV3ddzC3 A few key points: 🔹 While generative design was not widely used in directly producing items for Covid-19, additive manufacturers who use GD regularly had strong understanding of the design opportunities with AM and insight into their own capabilities, which allowed them to “dynamically adapt” to new needs. 🔹 Having generative design capacity allowed firms to overcome resistance around artificial intelligence (AI), instead developing a symbiosis with the software. 🔹 Generative design use could be influencing designer and engineer mindsets such that companies using these tools are more open to “foreign” designs and more likely to pivot. #AdditiveManufacturing #3DPrinting #GenerativeDesign
Iikka Rytkönen
2mo
The whole AM community giving a helping hand during Covid is one of the great stories in my opinion. Something that was left a bit on the hindsight though was the testing / approval of e.g. nasal swabs. Did you come accross anything related to that Stephanie? In my mind, something that is closely and tightly regulated (medical field) suddenly having all these producers outside that field raises a question were the designs approved somehow for medical use or was it looked at through the fingers because of the pandemic?
Additive Manufacturing Team Lead, EAC Product Development Solutions
2moI’m a huge fan of generative design. I’m an outlier among my engineering peers. Generative design removes the barrier to end results by allowing for an abstraction of the design process. A great deal of mindshare is devoted to the craft. Generative design frees up that mindshare to allow focus on the design itself. Or, more importantly, the goal or problem that design is being applied to. That realization - focus on the problem rather than the mechanisms used to solve the problem - and iterating/pivoting is a natural activity for those who embrace GD.