EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

The design freedoms of 3D printing are particularly attractive for those who seek regenerative medicine based therapeutic interventions. Using 3D printing, it is possible to design and manufacture highly personalised, tailored and complex structures that can fit the needs of a patient. However, there are two problems – how do we design these structures and how do we find materials that have both the function and are 3D printable? Our team at the Centre for Additive Manufacturing at the University of Nottingham are seeking ways in which we can overcome these barriers. We seek to find ‘automated’ or ‘high throughput’ methods to identify which materials can have both function and printability, and we seek optimisation approaches that will allows us to create tailored products where we are guided by design optimisation approaches that are based on ‘generative design’. We hope for a platform that will allow the user to go from specification of need to materials that provide function, and then to design of implant or structures, in a clearly delineated, efficient manner and I will show our vision for how this will look in the future.