I’m really excited about developments at the intersection of 3D printing and automated composites. My guess is that in the next decade the two will merge to the point of being two complementary components of the same “technology.” 3D printing (aka “Additive Manufacturing”) is already making inroads in the tooling market (see: Additive Engineering (USA) for a leading example) and ATL and AFP are well established automated composites technologies for aerospace production.
A leader in that market Electroimpact (USA) released this amazing video that shows their work combining 3D printed tooling with automated fiber placement (AFP):
In a smaller scale, ADDComposites (Finland) is building small scale automated fiber placement tools and software to bring this technology to a much more approachable scale and price point. I’m really excited to see their continued development!
And on an even smaller scale, check out the Fiber 3D printers from Desktop Metal (USA). This seems to push the Markforged (USA) type 2.5D thermoplastic technology a bit further with higher performance thermoplastics and the ability to lay wider tapes instead of fiber filament.
Do you know of any other interesting additive/automated composites efforts that should be included here? Let me know! email: [email protected]
I’m really excited to see how this technology transforms the composites industry in the coming years. One of these days I need to learn how to program robots!