On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we ran a 3D printing summit which focused on the intersection of computer science and additive manufacturing. We had an outstanding lineup of speakers who explored topics ranging from the challenges faced by users in understanding tasks both simple and complex to the applications of optimization and machine learning to design to a wide variety of materials to printing in the large. Each talk was wildly different and hugely fascinating.

One of the best parts of the event was that each speaker led a discussion group after their talk in which attendees had the opportunity to dig in depth into questions they had about the topics presented. To me, those discussions were often the highlight of the event.

One topic I want to highlight was applications of additive manufacturing and the constraints they bring with them. The discussion ranged widely here from fuel nozzles to tooling to jewelry. Important distinctions that came up include the size of the market (jewelry and tooling are both surprising large for example) and the degree of oversight needed for products to succeed.

Another very interesting question that came up was the extent to which the automated algorithms we saw presented are able to capture the whole toolchain. The toolchain itself is a topic for another day, as from an end user’s perspective it is needlessly complex. Worse, details such as the size of a printer nozzle may have profound implications for high level design decisions. If we can capture these relationships in models, they are more likely to succeed.

I was only able to attend about a third of the discussions (since they ran in parallel), and glancing at the notes from other groups I see topics as wide ranging as 3D scanning, the value of hardware vs software advances, wireless charging, and carbon fiber. I wish I could be a bird on the wall in every one of these discussions!