Abstract
Richard Feynman's famous words, “there's plenty of room at the bottom,” referred to the opportunities for revolutionizing the electronics industry by developing the science and technology of how to manufacture very small components (sub-micron to nanometer sized features) (Feynman, 1959) [1]. In additive manufacturing (AM), the opposite may be true: There's plenty of room at the top. AM's strength is in the low volume production of complex components, which is demanded in big industries such as oil and gas, construction, tooling, wind and water turbines, and infrastructure. Is AM's ‘big’ future in the manufacture of large structures? This special issue surveys the technical challenges and enormous opportunities associated with large scale additive manufacturing while discussing the materials, processes and applications that are enabled by scaling to much larger structures, much faster speeds and lower manufacturing costs. The authors believe that, if Professor Feynman was alive, he'd say “There's plenty of room at the top.”
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101727 |
| Journal | Additive Manufacturing |
| Volume | 39 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2021 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored in part by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department ofEnergy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). The authors first wish to thank Dr. Eric MacDonald for helping coordinate and organize this special issue. Second, we wish to thank not only the other authors in the issue but all of the authors who submitted articles. It is our profound belief that the work we are doing is critical for the future of manufacturing. Finally, we would like to thank the Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office for their continued support of large scale polymer and metal AM, as well as many other AM areas, at ORNL. While Professor Feynman characterized the dawn of the semiconductor as having plenty of room at the bottom, I believe the dawn of large scale AM is going to revolutionize old industries from the top.
