You Can Collect Your Car at Prontaprint: The Fact and Fiction of 3D Printing
A recent cover in the Economist described additive manufacturing (better known as 3D printing) as “The manufacturing technology that will change the world”. Our speaker Siavash Mahdavi will describe the state of the art in additive manufacturing, and dive into exciting applications of this revolutionary design and manufacturing technique in sectors such as medical, aerospace and tooling. For example, 3D printing has led to breakthroughs in orthopaedics, and intricate lattice structures for light weight aerospace components. Siavash will also discuss the role of mass customisation of consumer products through new advances in software, which promise to allow consumers to becoming co-designers.
Dr Siavash Mahdavi
Dr Siavash Mahdavi has spent much of his career focused on 3D printing. During his PhD in Evolutionary Robotics, he developed software to design complex lattice structures that could be manufactured through 3D printing. In 2008, Siavash founded Within Technologies (a software house that specialises in the development of software for the medical and aerospace industries) and Digital Forming (a company that is making use of 3D printing to enable the mass customisation of consumer products for high-street brands). Both companies were featured in the Economist cover story mentioned above.