By Angel Llavero López de Villalta, CEO at Meltio

At Meltio we will continue to innovate and solve metal additive manufacturing needs of the global industrial sector. Our unique wire-laser metal 3D printing technology is reliable and is changing the manufacturing paradigm with respect to traditional techniques: it allows to manufacture and repair metal parts in an industrial environment 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, making the creation of metal parts a reality, reducing manufacturing costs and providing competitiveness.

For Meltio, the year 2023 is being a year of consolidation at a technological level in terms of strengthening our commercial network and our distribution channel worldwide. We have expanded the facilities of our Meltio factory in Linares (Jaén) to develop new metal AM solutions and industrial applications, we have expanded our production capacity, we have acquired new land to further expand our factory in Linares, we have rented new spaces to expand our R&D capacity to launch in the market new wire-laser metal 3D printing products and we aim to expand our production capabilities and to certify our technological applications in all the industrial sectors in which we are involved. With this technological consolidation, we will be able to secure new contracts with our industrial customers. The year 2024 for us is going to be a very exciting year in which we are leaving behind our pre-adolescence.

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By Bart Van der Schueren, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer (CSTO) at Materialise.

Bart Van der Schueren,

3D Printing Trends For 2024: Shaping the Future of Manufacturing

As we stand on the brink of 2024, Materialise reflects on the dynamic landscape of 3D printing, anticipating not just growth, but a fundamental shift in adoption patterns. In the coming year, we predict four key trends – or shifts – that will redefine the industry.

Trend 1: 3D Printing – Fast Friend or Part of the Family?

In the realm of 3D printing, we’re witnessing a dual evolution—two approaches coexisting harmoniously. The first approach, “3D Printing as a Service,” embraces external expertise, offering swift and cost-effective solutions for one-off parts and prototypes through service bureaus. Simultaneously, the second approach sees 3D printing seamlessly integrated into production processes, revolutionizing mass manufacturing. Companies now recognize its intrinsic value and leverage it to print specific components for larger series of end-use parts or engage in the mass production of customized goods.

This dual approach marks a departure from the traditional role of 3D printing, transforming it from a peripheral player to an integral part of the production orchestra. At the same time, the demand for application-specific machines and workflows is driving innovation across the entire spectrum, from hardware to post-processing and software.

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By RK Anand, Co-founder and CTO at Recogni.

RK Anand

Reducing Power Consumption is a Top Priority Across All Industries

Whether we’re talking about electric vehicles or data centers, there is consensus that power consumption is skyrocketing and will only continue to get worse, especially with the increased use of AI. There will be a strong focus, and investment, on technologies and processes that can reduce power consumption and utilize energy more efficiently. Everything from massive compute architectural innovations, high performance power-optimized silicon, to new materials and creative cooling approaches are going to be key to enable an AI-first world

Generative AI Performance Set New “Standard” for Speed

Not only is the quality of generative AI output at a relentless pace of improvement, but the speed at which the results are delivered are unprecedented. As businesses and consumers alike come to expect this kind of speed with results, this same speed of progress will be expected of other industries and technologies – like factory automation, automated farming, accelerated construction and autonomous vehicles. There will be an expectation that any ADAS or self-driving feature (regardless of SAE Level) will perform nearly instantaneously and flawlessly. This means that there will be little room for error to regain public trust in self-driving technology, especially given the recent debacle with Cruise in San Francisco. There will be no room for “hallucinating” or “phantom breaking” – the technology has to be 99.999999% perfect, which means fast, accurate and power efficient.

Self-Driving Will be 100% AI-Based

The rate of progress in AI is unrelentless and we are seeing the quality of results with generative AI, especially with larger and larger models, is getting better. There are indicators for autonomous driving that it is within the realm of possibility, in the next three to four years, that the end-to-end method for driving autonomously will be fully AI based. Right now, the front end is detecting objects, lanes, etc. and using AI to make determinations, whereas the rest of the driving path (prediction, path planning, controls, etc.) is a more traditional standard computing approach. There are now indicators that in end-to-end AI based systems – one could potentially go from sensory input, full comprehension to vehicle level control actions. The critical element here will be to validate such systems, get to the point of “explainable-AI” and guarantee safety goals. This makes the full end-to-end driving loop fully AI-based. Of course this means that workloads will increase (i.e., a large model that could typically be run in the cloud will now have to run locally in a self-driving vehicle), which means increased power consumption, and leads us back to our issue around finding solutions to reduce power consumption.

By Prasad Mandava, CEO, Visual Collaboration Technologies (VCollab)

Making Better Design Decisions Using 3D Digital CAE Slides for Simulation Results Processing, Reporting, Reviewing, and Refining Previous Designs

From design through manufacturing, today’s new product development processes are driven by robust digital applications – with one notable exception. For many manufacturers and product development organizations, CAE analysis reporting for design validation and review remains largely a manual 2D process.

Design Engineers, Release Engineers, and other stakeholders rely on feedback from CAE analysis to guide critical product design decisions. This feedback is often in the form of 2D non interactive static documents such as PowerPoint slides, images, or videos. These formats are decades-old and simply not designed to operate in today’s 3D digital environment and limit the opportunity for full realization of benefits from CAE simulations. The consequences are extensive administrative work by costly CAE Analysts, and a lack of insight to guide designers and critical decision-making.

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By Russell Riddiford, ANCA Americas President, ANCA

Russell Riddiford

Entering 2023, there’s some uncertainty and speculation surrounding the market. With interest rates continuing to rise, the grumblings about an impending recession are still bubbling. Although I do predict that the overall market for 2023 won’t compete with some of the knock-out years of the past (I’m lookin’ at you 2018), at ANCA we do see a lot of opportunity in the year. At ANCA, we’re focused on continued diversification and expanding our reach into growing markets such as aerospace, medical, and automation.

Some predictions span across all markets – including the need for agility within an organization, achieving supply assurance, and making steps towards the smart factories of the future. If the pandemic has shown us nothing, it’s that businesses need to be agile to minimize risk in the ever-changing markets.

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By Doctor Yavuz Murtezaoglu, Founder and Managing Director, ModuleWorks

Dr. Yavuz Murtezaoglu

Trends in CAM technology

There are more than 1 million CAM Operators worldwide and they are using around 40 different major CAM software brands. The focus of the CAM vendors in 2023 is going to be delivering more value to their user base by providing annual maintenance updates.

Most CAM vendors are focusing on improving the User Experience to improve the productivity of the CAM operators and to reduce training needs for new operators. This means “easy to use” and “easy to learn” are both equally important topics to address by CAM vendors. Capabilities of tool path technology in CAM systems will evolve to address the needs for higher productivity of the CAM operators. A good example of this trend is quick adoption of tool path strategies like “One click Deburring” or “Fully automated Rotary machining” in many CAM systems. Many CAM Software vendors are deciding to license such tool path technologies from ModuleWorks as their main component provider for tool path calculation and simulation. This frees up their development resources to address the complete workflow from design with PMI (product manufacturing information) to post processing.

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By Jonathan Girroir, Technical Evangelist, Tech Soft 3D

Jonathan Girroir

AI is a Game Changer

Even though the industry has been talking about AI for many years, the trifecta of massive amounts of data available through the rise of the internet, the dramatic increase in processing power fueled by GPU’s originally designed for gaming and steady advances in software algorithms to analyze and use that data will result in the power of AI being more fully realized across almost all markets. AI is 100% the number one game changer in the coming years – it will change the way we interact with computers just as Google Search did 20 years ago.

Generative Design is one great example. Being able to use text prompts, leverage huge datasets and natural language recognition is now driving increased use of generative design, and I think we’ll see much more of that in 2023. But it goes beyond generative design and will have a big impact on Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) in general. For example, you will be able to generate large data sets and then have the system learn from it, and predict the outcome of deformations or anything else, give advance preview of post-processing results and even suggest certain workflows for optimum efficiency. Or give the system a basic 2D image and then it generates a 3D design from scratch.

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 By Volker Nesenhöner, CEO, OPEN MIND Technologies

Volker Nesenhöner

The shortage of skilled workers is becoming an increasingly important issue in the manufacturing industry. A large percentage of employees will retire in the next few years, and it will be a significant challenge to find new and qualified successors. Therefore, it is now a matter of quickly counteracting this development as the shortage of experienced employees is having a negative impact on the manufacturing sector.

The know-how that skilled workers have acquired over many years is gradually being lost. For companies, the loss can be enormous if they do not take countermeasures now. Therefore, manufacturers should focus on digitalization, process optimization and automation. This applies to small and medium-sized companies as well as large enterprises. Manufacturers need to adapt their processes to changing situations and this requires businesses to analyze, define and often reorganize their structures and processes. These challenges can only be mastered with state-of-the-art technologies.

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By Patrick Dunfey, Vice President of Marketing and Alliances, Anark

Patrick Dunfey

An all-in-one Digital Thread Collaboration Platform for 2023
A long-term manufacturing industry goal has been to make product data accessible and actionable across manufacturers and suppliers to allow for more effective collaboration and innovation. Since this information is rarely in one place, a platform to automatically aggregate information from disparate PLM, CAD, and other authoritative IT systems to create standards-based 3D PDF Technical Data Packages (TDPs) was important.  These documents were adopted by industry, especially the Department of Defense, as a superior way to organize, store and share information. All that was needed to open a TDP was the free Adobe Reader which is available on most desktops.
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By Jon Hirschtick, Chief Evangelist, PTC

Rapid Changes in Product Development in 2023: The Three A’s

Jon Hirschtick

Rapid change is knocking at the door.

Driven by massive amounts of volatility in almost every aspect of the world, product developers are in for continuing changes in the “three A’s”: Agile, Additive, and Augmented.

The first, and perhaps the most profound, change: Hardware developers are implementing Agile processes.

Why now? There are three reasons: Huge change in the world around them; lessons have been learned from agile software development; and the new generation workforce, who is “agile-native” in their culture and tools.

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