Rapid Ready Roundup: RAPID 2013, NAMII, and Minecraft

In the course of my diligent efforts to keep you good people up to date on the state of additive manufacturing (AM), I come across many interesting news items. I’ll gather them up every so often and present them in a Rapid Ready Roundup (like this one). You can find the last Roundup here.

Let’s start today’s Roundup with some news about RAPID 2013. The Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) has put out a call for speakers for next year’s RAPID. Interested parties can click here to submit an abstract. Speaking as an attendee, last year’s RAPID was a great chance to network with professionals in AM industry.

Moving on, NAMII has made a couple of recent announcements. The first is a call for proposals in the area of applied research. According to the press release:

 The overall goal is to get a proposal accepted that would possess full manufacturing capability. The challenge is to get the technology to a place where large industrial companies can feel comfortable using it.

You can find more details by clicking here.

The second announcement heralded the appointment of the executive committee. The committee has been drawn from academic, government and business fields and includes the following members:

• Jim McGuffin-Cawley, chairman and Arthur S. Holden professor of engineering in the department of materials science and engineering at Case Western Reserve University
• Eric Barnes of Northrop Grumman Corp.
• Jim Williams of 3D Systems Corp.
• Tim Shinbara of the Association for Manufacturing Technology
• Mark Tomlinson of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers
• Bill Macy of Stratasys
• Tom Stimson of The Timken Co.
• Bruce Kramer of the National Science Foundation
• John Russell of the Department of Defense
• Robert Ivester of the Department of Energy
• Gary Fedder, Carnegie Mellon University professor and director of the school’s Institute for Complex Engineered Systems

Finally, specialty company FigurePrints has added a new service. If the name sounds familiar, Rapid Ready has looked at FigurePrints in the past. The company’s niche is offering AM-created statuettes based on characters in World of Warcraft. Now the company has expanded to offer printing services for Minecraft, a popular builder game.

The average price of a print is $100 dollars, but leave plenty of lead time if you (or someone you know) plans on ordering.

“While our goal is to complete each print in less than one month, it can take several months in cases where we are printing something for the first time,” said FigurePrints founder, Ed Fries. “This is a new technology that’s being applied on a mass scale for the first time.”

Below you’ll find a video with Fries where he discusses the relationship between 3D printing and video games.

Sources: Wired, Plastic News, Pittsburgh Business Times, RAPID