3D Printing and Beyond is Café Scientifique topic on May 14

Philipp Schmaelzle will give a talk titled 3D Printing and Beyond: Disrupting Manufacturing through Incremental Fabrication? at the next Café Scientifique on Tuesday, May 14, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm at SRI International’s Conference Center in Menlo Park. The event is free and open to the public.

3D printing enables the fabrication of parts directly from digital models — an effort mostly independent of geometric complexity and with straightforward design rules. Its widespread adoption is creating a new ecosystem for designers, engineers, and kids alike, with new tools, business models, collaboration opportunities, and much more.

No longer limited to its original “prototyping” domain, 3D printing and related techniques are headed for a fascinating future. Starting with examples of what *you* could print today, we’ll try to discover the key(s) for its disruptive potential and will imagine what the future holds.

Philipp Schmaelzle has been passionate about 3D printing since printing his first part in 2006. He has been closely following the field’s tremendous progress as it unfolds via hobbyist circles, research programs, and commercial capabilities. When not speaking about personal fascinations such as this, Schmaelzle is excited to be a member of the Rapid Evaluation team at Google[x]—an interdisciplinary group of engineers, scientists and other creatives scouting widely and experimenting audaciously to hatch technology solutions with profound impact.

Previously, Philipp spent five years at Xerox PARC working on consumer, industrial and medical devices, LED lighting, displays, solar energy and applying optics in unusual ways. He picked up the craft and science of (array) optics design at Fraunhofer IOF (Jena, Germany) while developing insect-inspired imagers. Philipp studied Photonics and Electrical Engineering with Prof. Uli Lemmer at University of Karlsruhe (KIT), Germany and in Sydney, Australia.