Markforged Additive Manufacturing University teaches businesses about AM integration

Massachusetts-based 3D printer manufacturer Markforged has today announced the launch of the Markforged Additive Manufacturing University. Despite what the name might imply, the new program is not offering students an additive manufacturing curriculum, rather, it will help businesses to adopt 3D printing technologies into their existing workflows.

The Markforged Additive Manufacturing University will leverage the company’s expertise in industrial 3D printing with the aim of bridging the knowledge gap between additive design and operations. Businesses that “enroll” in the program will be given the opportunity to unlock faster time-to-markets, increased part efficiency and high productivity.

“Markforged Additive Manufacturing University is really about inspiring industry-wide innovation,” said Andrew de Geofroy, Markforged VP of application engineering. “Once we’ve helped engineers, designers, and the manufacturing industry build a strong foundation of additive manufacturing skills, the potential is nearly limitless.”

One of the hurdles facing the broad industrialization of additive manufacturing is adoption. Though AM technologies are becoming increasingly affordable and quality of parts is improving steadily, some businesses lack the know-how to properly integrate AM into existing workflows and truly exploit the technology.

The idea with the Markforged Additive Manufacturing University is to offer guidance to these companies to help them identify new applications for 3D printing within their business, design for additive manufacturing, properly manage the print process from end-to-end and build business cases for replacing less flexible traditional manufacturing processes.

Interested businesses can take part in the educational business program in three ways:

• Markforged will be offering single or multi-day workshops at its headquarters in Boston as well as a selection of courses throughout the calendar year taught by industry experts.
• Markforged will bring the course to the business in question, providing custom content for certification and training. This option is suitable for larger teams.
• Finally, Markforged will also offer free access to the Learning Library, an on-demand resource for building foundational knowledge about 3D printing and for providing best practices for 3D printing applications, including design guides.