Editorial

Citation

Campbell, I. (2013), "Editorial", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 19 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/rpj.2013.15619eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Rapid Prototyping Journal, Volume 19, Issue 5

Quite recently, I was asked if I could provide an image for the front cover of the 1995 “first edition” Rapid Prototype Journal. I am glad to say that I was able to run my finger along my bookshelf and pull the edition out. I also scanned the back page, which listed the contents of the issue. Contributors included Chuck Hull, Eli Sachs, Terry Wohlers, Dave Bourell, Joe Beaman, Harris Marcus and Marshall Burns. It is interesting to note that many of these are still closely involved in Additive Manufacturing, after all these years. Also recently, I had the pleasure of spending some time with Graham Tromans and he told me about the informal title he had received of “AM Dinosaur”. I am sure that this only refers to how far his involvement goes back and in no way to any likelihood of his extinction! I think it is encouraging to see that we work in a field that is sufficiently captivating and successful for numerous people to have made an enduring career out of it. As the reach of AM increases, I fully expect to see many more “Dinosaurs” emerge over the coming years.

At the other end of the career spectrum, it is also very encouraging to see young researchers coming into the field of AM. This is exemplified by the increasing interest being shown in the Additive Manufacturing category of the Emerald Engineering Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. This year, the quality of the entrants was higher than ever with many of them doing excellent research with wide-ranging potential impact. The winner this year was Dr Li Yang, of North Carolina State University, for work in the area of “Structural design, optimization and application of 3D re-entrant auxetic structures”. This work was not only highly innovative but has already found its way into useful application areas. My warmest congratulations and a €1,000 prize go to Dr Yang. If you are a doctoral-level researcher, or supervisor, please consider submitting your work for the award in future years.

Finally, as I am writing this in May 2013, there has been some recent press coverage of the manufacture and firing of a “3D Printed Gun” in the USA and the subsequent desire to ban it on the part of a Californian State Senator. I will avoid getting into the politics of gun control and the right to bear arms, but I will ask a couple of (hopefully) though provoking questions. First, surely we should not be surprised when AM technology is harnessed for the creation of weapons, after all, is this not the case for every new technology? Second, there has been quite a furore in the press about an individual using AM to print his own gun but, in terms of “weaponisation” of a technology, how much does this really differ from a large company printing parts for a fighter plane, since this too is a weapon? It is a sad but perhaps inevitable fact that our technology has been, and will continue to be, used for both peaceful and potentially destructive purposes.

Ian Campbell