Editorial

Citation

(2006), "Editorial", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 12 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rpj.2006.15612baa.001

Editorial

I wonder how often our readers are given the opportunity to explain the concept of layered manufacturing to an absolute novice, someone who has no previous knowledge of the technology. I often have to do this when I am asked to explain what I do at university when I am not teaching. I am then obliged to explain that research is a large part of my job and that I am working in the field of computer aided design and rapid prototyping. Many of the people with whom I have conversed have heard of CAD but not nearly so many are familiar with RP. When I describe how a CAD model can be faithfully reproduced as a physical item without the need for tools or human intervention, they are usually quite bemused. When I go further into the details of the processes that make this possible, they are soon in dire need of a visual aid. Occasionally, I may have a small RP model to hand that illustrates the “stair-stepping” caused by the layered nature of the technique and a look of enlightenment will begin to appear on their face. More often, I am away from my office or laboratory and I have to grope around for a well known item that can act as an analogy. One I have tried a few times is a loaf of sliced bread (in itself not a familiar item in every culture). It starts of as a whole, is sliced into layers and can be reconstructed once again into the whole. It is at this point that some of my “audience” begin to recollect images they have seen on the movie screen such as the human body being manufactured in “The Fifth Element”. (This is quite fitting in a way since one of the fastest growing areas of research is in the bio-modelling and bio-printing area.) Questions sometimes arise as to how close we are to this science fiction becoming science fact. I am usually chastised for my unwillingness to speculate and my desire to bring the topic “back down to earth”. Never-the-less, the overwhelming reaction to RP from these first-time hearers is one ranging from genuine interest to total amazement. I find these conversations very refreshing for two reasons. Firstly, they remind me that the area we work in still has some novelty value when participating in the activity of polite conversation. Secondly, and of course of much greater importance, fresh ideas for applications and future research directions can often spring from them. For example, our initial work in translating MRI scans to RP models at the University of Nottingham (see RPJ Vol. 2 No. 4) stemmed from an unplanned chat with a radiologist at a staff training course. I thoroughly recommend that, as members of the RP community, we do not shy away from talking about our work. It may not be as exciting as some occupations but it is also a long way from being automatically sleep-inducing. It can form part of the task of educating the wider public that we all care about and it can even lead to advances in our own work. I wonder how many new RP applications are waiting to be discovered through the medium of “chit-chat” (please excuse the colloquialism).

Ian Campbell