Polymers and additive manufacturing: from fundamentals to applications

07 June 2017

The historic Palazzo Feltrinelli, overlooking Lake Garda in Gargnano (province of Brescia), was the setting for the 2017 Eupoc (European Polymer Conference) “Polymers and additive manufacturing: from fundamentals to applications” that took place on May 21-25. Among the featured speakers were Jean-François Gerard (Insa Lyon, Cnrs), president of the European Polymer Federation, Claire Barrès (Insa Lyon, Cnrs), and Gilles Régnier (Arts et Métiers ParisTech). The University of Pisa participated in the scientific management of the conference together with event organizer, AIM (Italian Association of Science and Technology of Macromolecules).

Most of the 92 participants in Eupoc 2017 were from Europe, but Korea, China, Japan, and Arabia were also represented. Although there were fewer speakers this year than in previous editions, attendees demonstrated keen interest in the topics, as evidenced by the intensity of the Q&A sessions following each talk and the high level of participation in the final stages of the conference.

As regards subject matter, although “additive manufacturing” is now considered a synonym for 3-D printing, many of the speakers expanded on the fundamental technological concept, generating a great deal of interest among the audience. Among the noteworthy talks we mention that by A. Donghi of Sharebot, who illustrated the technical characteristics of the printers produced by his company. The shower of questions at the end of his talk provided further evidence of the audience’s strong interest in technology and technical specifications.