This year Austin was an interesting conference for all the wrong reasons.
First question was "Where was everyone?"
Participation was great but overall attendance was way down.
Very few (<5) industrial attendees and only NIST was there.
It is interesting to see that foreign investment and development in the
technology is extremely strong.
Also only one maybe two SLA papers while most revolved around SLS(14),
FDM(8), and LOM(5).
Papers came from S&NA(47), Asia (9), Europe(14).
Watch for a very competitive direct metal process to emerge out of Sweden
this next year.
Does this mean the US and it's manufacturing base are losing interest?
Or does it mean that the champions who pushed this technology at high
levels are gone?
Will the US lose it's competitive edge?
Should we even be concerned?
for other goodies all I can say is "You missed it".
Elaine
*******************************************************************
Opinions, suggestions, and other controversial matter VOID where prohibited.
******************************************************************
Elaine T. Hunt, Director elaine.hunt@ces.clemson.edu
Laboratory to Advance Industrial Prototyping
Clemson University 206 Fluor Daniel Bldg.
Clemson, SC 29634-0925
864-656-0321 (voice) 864-656-4435 (fax)
http://www.vr.clemson.edu/credo/persall/persall.html
http://www.vr.clemson.edu/rp/
http://www.vr.clemson.edu/credo/rp.html
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:04:06 EEST