2021 is the year in which advancements in manufacturing are accelerated and poised to be at the heart of our recovery from recent global disruptions. Demand for digitalization and automation of processes on the shop floor reached new heights, driving rapid adoption of technologies in areas such as IIOT, predictive maintenance, VR&AR, collaborative robots, 3D Printing and many more. Having seen how a world at standstill gave the planet a much-needed respite from carbon emissions, manufacturers are facing pressures to embrace sustainability and build climate resilience.
With so much development taking place, the manufacturing world is undergoing an upgrade. Granted, we have been able to create marvellous objects and devise tools and processes to help us create them better, but the speed at which innovation of physical objects takes place is concerning. Let’s ask ourselves this – what would our world look like if hardware developments had matched the rigour with which software solutions are being brought to market? Would we still be facing the same global challenges we face today, or would we already have solved them by now? With those questions in mind, we hope to bring about a paradigm shift in manufacturing that is empowered by 3D Printing and Hyperganic.
1. Elevating the Roles of Designers and Engineers
A facet of manufacturing that has not been at the focus of change even though it is long due for an overhaul is our design and engineering process. It is the result of an ancient paradigm that was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, a way of building objects that still transpires modern organizations large and small. That is where expert designers and engineers dedicate time to drafting, drawing and building concepts of desired objects based on their own intelligence and experiences.
Two challenges arise from this mindset. First, the performance and properties of the end objects almost always depend on the skills of the designers and engineers. Second, that dependency on a few key people presents limitations that may result from their own styles and principles. To make better use of the expertise of designers and engineers, their roles need to evolve. Instead of spending prolonged periods of time designing with sketches and CAD drawings, they could make better use of their talent by evaluating and improving designs rapidly generated by computer algorithms.
2. Going from Computer-Aided to Computer-Generated Design
Designs churned out by computers are nothing new. It was used to translate human-designed microchip architecture into logic gate placements and routing in the semiconductor industry. The same can and should be done for other physical products for a wide range of industries, from healthcare to aerospace.
3. Unlocking the Full Potential of 3D Printing
The beauty of Additive Manufacturing is that objects of higher complexities do not cost any more to produce than those of basic geometries. However, digitally producing objects of high complexity has previously been a mammoth task with software that has yet to catch up with the hardware infrastructure. With Hyperganic Core – our Algorithmic Design software platform, we could now literally go beyond the surface, instructing each particle of an object the point in space at which we would like it to be. We are now able to unlock the full potentials of Additive Manufacturing and designers to create objects that are unlimited by complexity, rapidly. This is the only way we could iterate and solutionize fast enough to meet the needs of today’s global challenges.
