Kicking things off with real-time defect detection, this article is the first in a series delving into Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 3D printing, as the technology continues to be field-tested in ever more demanding applications to improve the quality of parts, automate the manufacturing process and even operate machines autonomously.
In 3D Printing Industry’s recent Future of 3D printing: experts on the frontier technology to watch survey, AI and Machine Learning (ML) were mentioned by a quarter of all those interviewed, making them the single most talked about technologies. Some respondents lauded them as ‘defining the frontier,’ while others saw them as a basis for “self-directing robots,” but elsewhere, firms like Printpal are using them in the here and now.
“We have an anomaly detection system that runs in the background, and this system can ‘sense’ when something very slight has changed with the printer or if there is an anomaly,” says Printpal’s CEO Peter Lebiedzinski.