March 2023

Excited to see some of you next month at AMUG, but before we get there we have a cool new feature to rave about and 2 pieces of news – one of which I wanted to give you a heads up on today.

First to the features, and to the continued results from our collaboration with TWI, ASTM, Photocentric and MPI under our Innovate UK grant: Material Test Panels . We’ve invested heavily in improving materials management as a way to improve the understanding of that material characteristics have on final part quality. What could be more important then to track material characteristics in as much granularity as possible? You’re right, nothing!

That’s what we thought too. Hence the decision to improve the way we track materials testing data. Previously, users who wanted to record a test simply did so by uploading a result pdf. Now you can define a variety of test data you want to capture independently so it’s easily to draw associations between that data over history and the final results the parts achieve in the machines. You can define a full material test panel, and detail each of the results you’d like to see. These can be templatized at the Material Type level.

Of course, the next stage is to give you the ability to draw those data points directly from the machine – we’ll be getting to that soon. If you have an interest in diving further into the materials management tool and understanding what other improvements are coming up, get in touch . Celina, the Materials Management Maestro (MMM™ 😉) is going to be at Rapid this year giving a talk, so that might also be a good chance to connect. 

You may also want to ask either of us about the new release that will be announced in a couple of weeks: Our standalone Application Quoting tool. This combines the countless features we developed for our Flows workflow management engine and makes them available to people who just want to use these features. With it, quotes for additive applications that require engineering knowledge to complete will be faster and more collaborative, leading to more accurate quotes and more wins thanks to speed. Don’t get me wrong: We’re NOT planning on diving deep into some online quote tool where customers can upload their own designs. This is meant for serious service bureaus working on cutting edge application that want to make the process more efficient. Find out more information about our new Application Quoting tool here but please keep it between us as the news won’t break until the second week of March.

Or you could ask me more about it at AMUG. I’ll be there (with our awesome Goldberg machine, which caused quite a stir at Formnext, and the designs which we’ve now shared here ). We have a booth (no 46, Salon D) and several events going on:

• I am moderating the panel “Use of Data in Additive Manufacturing Operations” (March 21st, 3-4PM)

• I am on the panel “MES vs Excel or Whiteboard: A Comparison” (March 23rd, 10:30AM-12PM)

• Derek is on the workshop “An Introduction to Basic Measurement and Metrology for Additive Manufacturers” (1:30PM-2:30PM), then on the workshop “Scanning and Metrology” (3-4PM), as well as the panel "Measurement, Metrology and 3D Scanning forAdditive Manufacturing" (4:30-5:30PM), all on March 20th

Hope to see you there! If you want to make sure that we find a time to meet in Chicago, you can do so here.