Laser additive manufacturing conference scheduled for November

Frankfurt, Germany -- The 14th Annual International Wohlers Conference will be held on Thursday Nov. 29 at EuroMold 2012 in Frankfurt, Germany which runs Nov. 27-30. This year's event will focus on high-value metal parts produced by additive manufacturing.

Hundreds of thousands of series production parts have been produced using metal additive manufacturing processes. Aerospace companies are already well involved in qualifying new materials and processes and certifying new designs, notes Wohlers Associates. Medical companies in Europe are using additive manufacturing to produce metal orthopedic implants in the tens of thousands, and consumer applications are seeing use of metal products produced by additive manufacturing. And new processes are being developed to produce relatively large metal parts at a much faster rate.

"Metal-based additive manufacturing has developed more impressively in 10 years than AM for plastics developed in more than two decades," said Dr.-Ing. Eberhard Döring, CEO of EuroMold show organizer DEMAT. "This segment of the industry has quickly gained impressive traction."

This year's Wohlers Conference features nine experts in metal additive manufacturing from the UK, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and the US, collectively representing decades of knowledge in additive manufacturing and 3D printing. The keynote speaker is Fraunhofer ILT's Dr.-Ing. Ingomar Kelbassa on high-speed laser additive manufacturing; other conference topics range from AM manufacturing methods to additive metal materials themselves, to AM in aerospace systems, medical implants, and jewelry designs. (Here's the full conference program [PDF].) More info and registration instructions can be found on the EuroMold site.