Technology trends come and go and the high-tech world is littered with ‘next big things’ that have not yet quite made it big (or made it all). Some of these will no doubt have their day but the time has to be right; sometimes this is not just about technology maturity but factors such as economic, social or even the political climate which can also affect what happens.
A few years ago there was a lot of news about flexible displays and e-paper: pieces of plastic onto which you could download books and newspapers but then fold up and put in your pocket once you’d finished reading. There was speculation about whether traditional printed paper was a thing of the past and whether we’d all be reading bendy digital newspapers on the train. It has not quite happened that way although the progression is clear – a myriad of e-book readers have really taken off in the past year and the downloading rates onto those devices are rising incredibly quickly. Online versions of print magazines and newspapers have also begun to dent the traditional print market and there is now real pressure on the printing industry as a result of these technology advances. These digital print devices truly have become disruptive technologies. While the e-paper scenario has not yet fully flourished, the generic flexible display technology on which it was based has grown rapidly into commercial displays for TVs and consumer devices, all of which are now commercial realities.
The current buzzwords seem to be ‘wearable tech’, again linked with flexible electronics, as it happens. Wearable tech encompasses things like watches, clothes and gadgets worn by an individual and which will interact with us and perform a multitude of functions (that we apparently want in our daily lives). Who knows which of these devices will become a future hit but the lesson is that a technology advance can take on a life of its own, often one which was not foreseen at the outset. So although we may not be reading a bendy newspaper on the train, we may be watching the latest news feed on our interactive watch and tweeting our views on it in real time!
In manufacturing, the current hot ticket is 3D replication. These are the machines which can build fully three-dimensional objects, predominantly from plastics but also in metals and ceramics. This is termed various things from 3D printing to rapid prototyping to additive layer manufacturing but all point to the same thing: take a 3D CAD model and make a full replica of it in 3D form within hours. This technology is now being applied to so many industries that there is a real danger of the demand for machines outstripping supply – very good news for the companies who make the machines but not so good for the users. Although this technology has grown from a small, hobbyist-type beginning, there are now industrial-scale machines making fully functional parts which go into commercial products. It is this larger-scale end which is likely to mushroom in terms of demand and it remains to be seen how things will develop.
Late last year there was news from the US that GE Aviation had developed a fuel injector nozzle (for a jet engine) that was being built with additive manufacturing. The nozzle is a breakthrough in replication technology because it is a critical component, is 25% lighter, 5 times stronger and can be made in far fewer steps than before. The projection is that GE will make more than 100,000 such nozzles by 2020 but therein lies the problem – the current production rate is one nozzle per day per machine, hence it is clear that a lot of machines are going to be required to meet just this single component demand. As other industrial parts get qualified, the requirement for machines is likely to increase exponentially. This is going to be a massive opportunity for the machine suppliers but could also be a headache. It is often glibly said that, as in the realms of science fiction, one machine could replicate itself – whether this happens to solve the supply problem remains to be seen but no doubt other avenues, as yet unknown, will need to be explored. For now, the market seems to be waiting; let’s see who meets the demand, and how.