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Home > Additive Snack > AI Update in Additive Manufacturing: Design, Process, Workforce and Industry impact
Podcast: Additive Snack
Episode:

AI Update in Additive Manufacturing: Design, Process, Workforce and Industry impact
Category: Technology
Duration: 00:56:30
Publish Date: 2026-03-04 05:01:00
Description:

Fabian Alefeld hosts Duann Scott on the Editor Snack podcast to discuss how AI is evolving in additive manufacturing, moving from “AI-washing” and impractical text-to-mesh hype toward more capable tools using language models, visual language models, surrogate models, and emerging foundational models. Scott describes testing tools by trying to make them fail and highlights a recent success with the Raven plugin for Rhino/Grasshopper, which generated a parametric VESA mount and tripod adapter from minimal prompts, then iteratively added fillets and an isogrid structure and produced a printable part within hours. They discuss constraints like missing engineering training data and design intent, the promise of AI for toolpath and process optimization (including transfer of parameter knowledge across materials), and the role of the 3MF format in capturing toolpath and metadata to enable richer, searchable datasets. Scott previews CDFAM events in Barcelona, DC, and Tokyo and emphasizes that progress requires significant data work and investment.

 

 

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

 

02:18 AI Hype to Real Progress

 

04:13 Testing AI Design Tools

 

04:46 Data Gaps and Design Intent

 

07:15 Two Paths for AI Design

 

10:15 Raven Grasshopper Breakthrough

 

13:17 Pushing Parametric Complexity

 

20:28 Limits of Black Box Optimization

 

22:40 Toolpath and Material Transfer

 

26:18 Alloy Discovery and Qualification

 

28:05 3MF Role Teaser

 

28:18 3MF Format Overview

 

29:17 Smarter Toolpath Extensions

 

32:31 Metadata for AI Training

 

35:43 Data Ownership and Synthetic Data

 

39:59 AI Impact on Additive

 

44:10 Workforce and Reshoring

 

47:22 What Is CDFAM

 

49:49 CDFAM Audience and Format

 

51:43 DC Event and Government

 

54:05 Wrap Up and Thanks


 
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