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More manufacturing is coming back to the United States – and that’s good news for the Empire State. The percentage of New Yorkers working in factories has declined over the years, but manufacturing jobs pay higher average wages than non-manufacturing work, especially upstate. Greater incomes aren’t the only benefits to New York communities, however. Manufacturing also encourages innovation, promotes workforce development, and uses natural resources wisely.

This week, we get down to “brass-like” tacks, as the Additive Manufacturing Industry is fond of characterizing. (As more and more materials are created and modified to adopt to AM, you find descriptions like “ABS-like” and “Polycarbonate-like”, as their properties are designed to emulate the real material, yet chemically and physically adaptable to AM processes.)

This week we’re going to have some fun! Sorry for the weeks prior where I went through history and process of this exploding technology. I have taken you behind the scenes, away from all the hype that the media is giving to Additive Manufacturing, and given you some facts. Now, let’s get to the fun part- the “Gee Whiz” of Additive.

This week we will explore 3-D Printing! Really! Yes, all of the techniques we have discussed so far have been variously tagged as 3-D Printing, and they are correct. It is just that now we are going to look at printers who perform much like the Inkjet printer we introduced in the first article, where we traced origins of this exciting technology.

As Promised, this week we will take a look at Additive Manufacturing of metal parts. Last week I suggested I would cover Selective Laser Sintering, but there have been so many methods of 3-D printing metal parts, I thought I would cover them all.