The 2011 MD&M West is over, but the contacts and connections made there continue. If you weren’t able to visit the show, here are a few of the highlights pertaining to Make Parts Fast.

This year’s show was primarily about investigating the various offerings of vendors. Plenty of technical support people were on hand to answer questions and help designers solve rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing challenges.

Of course, there is always a cool design to show off at the booths, like this gear-based mechanism on display at the Stratasys booth.

Lots of service bureaus are on hand as well. ZoomRP and GrowIt have some great people on hand to question. 

Several conversations revolved around developments in materials; how critical it is to pick the right one, the affects of impact on various materials, and so on. Newer materials will be coming that will help some design challenges.

EOS showed some of their newer materials for the medical industry. Here are a few examples of “printed” cranial implants that would support the brain in various head injury cases.

This tiny printed piece connects the implant to the body, allowing bone to grow around it.

Of course, the show offered an opportunity to see various machines up close, such as the ZCorp 250,

one from 3D Systems;

and Objet.

All of these booths had technical support personal available to put their systems through their paces.

While we were at the show, Design World introduced its new iPad app, DW. Here we are showing Stacy Sullivan of Proto Labs how it works.

Roland DGA operates in the subtractive side of the Additive Manufacturing market. The engineers took all the hard work of programming out of these systems; you simply make a selection on a screen and the software does the work for you.

MD&M West often functions as the start of the show season for Additive Manufacturing. The next show will be the RAPID show in Minneapolis. See you there.

MPF