Editorial

Citation

Campbell, I. (2010), "Editorial", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rpj.2010.15616aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Rapid Prototyping Journal, Volume 16, Issue 1

Some of you may remember me talking about becoming an “RP grandfather” in one of my previous editorials. I was referring to the fact that my son had designed and built his first RP model. Well, it seems that the design bug bit him (or perhaps it was already in his genes) and he has now left home to study Product Design Engineering at the University of Glasgow. His course is run jointly with the Glasgow School of Art who provide RP capability to the students. I expect I will see more “RP grand-children” in the future! However, on a more serious note, my son e-mailed recently to say that exposure to RP during high school studies was quite rare amongst his peers. This was a sobering thought because it was an example of the lack of knowledge about RP within the secondary education system (at least in the UK). The opportunity to enthuse more young minds about the excitement of developing their own physical solutions to design and engineering problems is being missed. One reason for this remains the relatively high cost of purchasing and running an RP system, even the less expensive 3D printing machines offered by Z-Corp and Stratasys. A possible solution to this was being promised by Desktop Factory and this may still come to fruition now that 3D Systems has acquired some of their assets. Other options are available such as the Fab-at-Home concept or the new A4 paper system being offered by MCor Technologies. Let us hope that a robust, low cost, easily maintainable RP system does indeed make its way into most of our schools in the near future.

On the other end of the technological scale, here at Loughborough University, we have just taken delivery of a Connex 500 multi-material system from Objet Geometries. The installation and training all went very smoothly and now we are starting to use the machine to support several research projects. I first heard of simultaneous multi-material rapid prototyping back in the late 1990s while on a research visit to Rutgers University. Indeed, that research team published an article on their work in the 2000 volume of the Rapid Prototyping Journal (RPJ) entitled “A novel system for fused deposition of advanced multiple ceramics”. Even at that time, multi-material additive manufacturing was promising numerous benefits. Nevertheless, it took almost a decade since that visit for a commercial system to appear, towards the end of 2007. We are looking forward to getting to grips with our new tool and investigating the unique opportunities it affords, particularly in terms of innovative product design. I would be very happy to explore collaboration with anyone else working in this area. It will be interesting to see if any other commercial system vendors follow Objet into the multi-material market.

Finally, a belated thank you to Dr Brent Stucker for all his valuable input to the RPJ while he was our Regional Editor for the Americas. Brent was given an official thank you by the editorial team at the SFF Symposium in Texas last August. His position has been filled by Dr David Bourell from the University of Texas at Austin and we are looking forward to Dave's contribution. Brent continues to serve on the journal's Editorial Advisory Board.

Ian Campbell