The 15,000-square-foot lab, which opened this winter, has over $2 million worth of plastic, polymer, and metal 3D printing equipment, along with advanced processing and analysis capabilities so that the students, faculty, and industry partners that use the lab, such as Honeywell Aerospace and Concept Laser Inc., can be prepared to work in the expanding AM sector. A new composite 3D printer that can use two different materials arrived at the lab on Friday, joining four other technologies that can be used to print functional parts.Dhruv Bhate, an Associate Professor at ASU’s Polytechnic School, said about 3D printing, “It’s a way of making things that penetrates many disciplines. We are at the start of something exciting. We are going to see a lot of growth.”
“And we’re growing. We are in a growth mode to catch up with all the equipment we’ve invested in,” Bhate said about the lab.
Bhate teaches three 3D printing courses at the university that will help students learn the necessary skills to get into the industry:
- Additive Manufacturing Processes
- Design for Additive Manufacturing
- Additive Manufacturing Materials & Structures
Companies including Honeywell and Orbital ATK are seeing an uptick in skilled workers entering career paths and are benefiting from graduates of programs such as those offered by ASU. The importance of designing for additive manufacturing (DfAM) is growing among companies employing AM technologies, and students graduating with these skills face a bright future of prospects.
Bhate said, “It is one of the hottest courses in demand right now.”
Immensa will also be developing a website that’s designed to educate consumers about 3D printing.Immensa CEO Fahmi Al Shawwa told Arabian Business that the 3D printing courses “…will all be related to the application of additive manufacturing for different sectors, the materials, and the technologies.
“It [Immensa] has moved from just a business to being an advocate of sitting down and [gathering people] to talk about how we can utilise this technology in a very cost effective way. There has been a lot of hype and a lot of people talking about it. But how much application has there been? It’s not even minimal. It’s negligible.”
“We realised a lot of inquiries we get are from individuals and consumers…so we’re launching a portal, a website. In the ‘make it’ section, you upload your 3D design, and it tells you the available materials, the pricing and so on. You click it, you buy it and it gets shipped to you,” explained Al Shawwa.
The second part of the new consumer website will be a marketplace for users to upload and sell their designs, as well as their 3D printed products.
Al Shawwa said, “This facilitates AM [additive manufacturing] accessibility in the region, instead of shipping internationally. You’ve got a lot of designers, students and freelancers [here] that come up with fantastic designs.”
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