3D printing in sustainability Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

We’ve got a lot of online events and webinars to tell you about in today’s roundup, with topics ranging from safety and sustainability to AM training and industrial 3D printing.

Autodesk’s Advanced Manufacturing Summit

Tuesday, August 25th through Thursday, August 27th, Autodesk is hosting a free, global, and virtual Advanced Manufacturing Summit, featuring speakers and sessions focused on CAM, injection molding, generative design, additive manufacturing, automation, and other design and manufacturing trends. In addition to networking time and some hands-on learning sessions, and a COVID success story, there will be a keynote presentation each day.

All keynotes will take place at 11 am EDT. On the 25th, Autodesk’s Vice President of Business Strategy for Design & Manufacturing, Srinath Jonnalagadda, and Neil Briggs, founder of UK auto manufacturer BAC Mono, will discuss adapting to and overcoming the challenges posed by manufacturing in a post-COVID world. Autodesk’s Associate Vice President of Engineering, Ian Pendlebury, and Engel’s Head of Process Technologies, Dr. Johannes Kilian, will focus on data connectivity in their keynote on the 26th. Finally, Brian Betty, Ultimaker’s Director of Business Development, Autodesk’s Leanne Gluck, the Manager of Business and Industry Strategy, and Jabil’s Senior Director of Digital Manufacturing, Rush LaSelle, will talk about the role of AM in agile manufacturing. You can register for the three-day summit here.

Safe 3D Printing with Rize

Boston-based additive manufacturing company Rize will discuss safe 3D printing in a webinar at 2 pm EDT on Wednesday, August 26th. The webinar will cover several topics, such as the four stage of safe 3D printing, the company itself and its technology and materials, and the story of how the company fared working remotely during COVID-19.

“Because of our focus on overall 3D printing safety, we were able to adapt and bring our printers home as well as assist the community with the COVID PPE effort.”

You can register for the webinar here. Once you’ve registered, a confirmation email will be sent to you with information on how to join.

Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing

Also on the 26th, from 11 am to 1 pm EDT, Women in 3D Printing (Wi3DP) is hosting its next virtual panel and network event, “Sustainability in Additive Manufacturing & 3D Printing,” sponsored by Link3D. Kristin Mulherin, the Founder and Fresident of AM-Cubed, will be moderating, and the speakers will be HP’s appointed Chief Sustainability Officer Ellen Jackowski, Henkel’s Global Head of Marketing Cindy Deekitwong, and Sherry Handel, the Executive Director of the Additive Manufacturing Green Trade Association (AMTGA).

“We’ll have plenty of time for a live Q&A from the attendees, and networking before and after for an opportunity to “virtually mingle” with people from your local Wi3DP chapters and afar. With men and women participating from all over the world, join us for this global networking opportunity!”

You can register for the event here.

3DEXPERIENCE: A Virtual Journey Continues

Earlier this month, Dassault Systèmes held the first part of its 3DEXPERIENCE: A Virtual Journey, a series of digital programming which is replacing its annual 3DEXPERIENCE Forum. The journey is continuing on Wednesday, August 26th, with “Fueling Innovation for the New Agile Enterprise.” Two tracks—Collaborative Innovation and Supercharge Innovation with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform—will be available for participants, and each one will be jam-packed with industry experts and other speakers.

“What if your organization could seamlessly connect and bring together multiple streams of data, people, and processes into one single platform? These senior executives from Dassault Systemes will present how leading enterprises are redefining and enabling a new, more efficient way to innovate and collaborate across internal and external value networks.”

Several subject matter experts will also share how they’re finding new, more efficient ways to innovate and collaborate through their presentations. Episode 2 sessions will be available online at 9 AM ET on the 26th. You can register for 3DEXPERIENCE: A Virtual Journey here, and don’t forget to mark your calendar for the final two sessions on September 23rd and October 14th.

Additive Manufacturing Training with Tooling U-SME

On Thursday, August 27th, The Barnes Global Advisors (TBGA) is presenting an exclusive webinar with educational technology and blended learning nonprofit Tooling U-SME, called “Additive Manufacturing gets Better, Faster and Cheaper with Training!” TBGA ADDvisors Tim Simpson and Chelsea Cummings will join the company’s Founding Director John Barnes to talk about how organizations can use team-based learning to save costs and develop skills in additive manufacturing.

“One goal of AM training is to provide guidance to organizations in recognizing cost savings opportunities. To do this, engineers must begin to design with AM in mind. Without that central shift in development, AM would never make business sense. With that simple shift, it is possible to design out significant cost drivers.”

The webinar will take place at 1 pm EDT, and you can register here.

Mimaki Talks Industrial 3D Printing

This roundup’s final webinar is also on the 27th, and is the last of Mimaki‘s Live events series, which was launched in June. This free Industrial Market Edition will focus on how COVID-19 impacted the industrial and manufacturing sector, and how businesses can recover and reactivate. This exclusive live-stream event will feature several expert guest speakers, who will share with attendees how they can discover their own unique opportunities with both UV and 3D printing technologies.

The webinar will also feature a panel discussion between several of Mimaki’s industrial partners and media suppliers, in addition to opinion polls and the chance to ask questions. The webinar will go from 6-8:30 am EDT, and you can register here. You can check out the recording of the previous Mimaki Live webinar about the textile and apparel market below:

Will you attend any of these events and webinars, or have news to share about future ones? Let us know!

The post 3D Printing Webinar and Virtual Event Roundup, August 23, 2020 appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

In this series, previously we looked at how we’re creating a system designed to spit out less able things and that these things may be better but will be less robust and more challenging to repair. As the tip of the spear grows ever sharper, it also becomes more brittle. We have more things, but they will last longer (in the natural environment), and we will find it easier to throw them away. Rather than individual firms designing certain things for planned obsolescence, we are, all of us, participating in a system that produces more fragile items with shorter life spans. We cannot fight this system head-on, but we may be able to subvert it, change it and help us all. The path to extricating ourselves from a disposable world is Digital Kintsugi.

Kintsugi is a Japanese method of repairing broken pottery with gold and lacquer. A fractured ceramic piece is then proudly restored with a clear remnant of the breakage visible to all.

“Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated… a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin….Mushin is often literally translated as ‘no mind,’ but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. …The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.”

— Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics

In terms like “mono no aware” and “wabi-sabi” and the related “kintsugi”, we have a potential philosophical and cultural counterweight to contemporary consumer culture. By accepting transience and transformation, by being okay with imperfection and seeing a repaired thing as somehow improved, we can get passed our shrink-wrapped existence. And its Japanese, too, like manga and sushi.

We live in a world where we lust after things. Indeed, many of our ambitions and desires are for things, and we give our lives for stuff. The moment one acquires the desired something, it fades, slips into being spurned, is then forsaken, and begins somehow to rot. A thing will never fulfill us, but we don’t realize this and instead lust after new newer things. We’re chasing a thing-related high that doesn’t exist.

Kintsugi will help us to break through these barriers. What’s more, we’re no longer making or recycling for making’s sake, nor are we doing it for some grand sustainability goal, we are doing it also to celebrate this thing. Rather than focus our attention on the unattainable new, kintsugi places it on the mindful now of things we already have.

A patina on some steels or worn leather and just-right jeans are already examples of wear and tear that are celebrated. We just have to extend scratches on polymer and other everyday damage to the realm of the beautiful.

With 3D printing, we can make things last longer. We can make spare parts and create out-of-production spares to extend the life of many everyday objects. Many more people will need to be able to design for this to take on meaningful proportions of all the things. Perhaps, if our phones became 3D scanners or if it were easier to take 2D and make it 3D, we could radically extend the life of many things.

In particular, small spare parts are very inexpensive when 3D printed on desktop machines and even through services. If the alternative is for the user to throw away the good, then any single repair using a 3D printed part would be extremely valuable for the environment. Imagine if one CAD file leads to 1,000 coffee makers not being thrown away. Now, digital spare parts are part of grand EU initiatives—or the plans of single individuals running into a part that they need—but a more organized approach would be very valuable.

If we looked at the sum total of e-waste and what were the most popular items to see how they could be repurposed or extended, then we could in, and organized way make the world a lot more sustainable through 3D printing. There are many spares already being made, from Playmobil skateboard wheels, to bass guitar parts to switches for venerable La Pavoni espresso machines. On platforms like Thingiverse or YouMagine we can already see that spare parts are a lively and very popular category.

Organically and without a business model, it is already growing. From handles for Mokka Makers to the incredibly popular vacuum cleaner parts category to the super-specific, such as a faceplate for a joystick used in forestry equipment, we are currently making a mark.

Guided development, easier CAD, and better 3D scanning will help but a philosophical edge, and new coolness will do wonders also. Patagonia’s worn wear is a great example of obviously repaired clothing that gives everyone involved a good feeling while extending the life of things.

In the 3D printing community, we are repairing things because we can, but we need to see if we can make this cool, even desirable. Obviously-repaired objects proudly displaying their scars needs to be an established practice that adds sparkle and history to otherwise quotidian things—especially in a world with so few things that last any effort to extend the life of things, a little bit will do wonders for us all.

The Japanese don’t use transparent lacquer; they mix in gold to heighten the repair, give it luster, and get one to notice it. What could we do to make 3D printed repairs beautifully obvious? Could we use Bronzefill, a particular purple, or make the 3D printed layers more obvious? What do you think?

Creative Commons Attribution: Ervaar Japan, Ervaar Japan, Steenaire.

The post The Brittle Spear Part III: Digital Kintsugi and 3D Printed Spare Parts appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.