“The Cool Parts Show” Season One Now Complete: Here is Why We Launched the Show and How You Can Help

A challenge of covering additive manufacturing is that the potential audience is huge relative to the audience of users who are succeeding with additive today.

Other industrial technologies do not present this problem. We know who can benefit from injection molding. Ditto machining. Additive is different. With additive, some manufacturers have begun to use it and some are even mastering it, but many others, across many sectors, are instead watching additive and getting ready, waiting for the moment to jump in. Still others could benefit from AM if only they or their customers better understood its possibilities. And then there are those people who love manufacturing and therefore love additive manufacturing, without regard to their level of connection to it right now, because they enjoy thinking about the possibilities for invention and efficiency that AM makes possible.

The regular visitors to this site and the readers of our magazine tend to be those who are underway with additive or well advanced with thinking about it. However, new additive users will come from the last of the groups above, those who are open to AM, intrigued by AM or not aware yet of how much AM will offer them. To reach these people, we have created something new: a video series showcasing the possibilities and parts AM is making real. That series is The Cool Parts Show, and the entire first season is available now.

The name says what it is. Each episode of The Cool Parts Show focuses on a cool part made additively, discussing not only how the part was made, but also how it illustrates some important aspect of AM’s promise. The first season’s parts include a rocket fuel injector with a working motor inside; a spine implant made through topology optimization; a construction tool made by an inventor turned manufacturer; shoe insoles customized to the wearer’s feet; and an AM build plate made better by AM. All these episodes can be found both here on this site and on our YouTube page.

The show is for you. But the show is for someone else as well, and in this I am asking for your help. AM is going to bring changes, big ones. Existing manufacturers will change because of it, companies will become manufacturers for the first time because of it, and manufacturing will expand into new product types and new possibilities as people come to AM to undertake their aims within it. All this will happen, but let’s speed it along. Our show is meant to be a flag to the future likely users, drawing them toward the potential of AM for making something important, real and (yes) cool. Help us reach these people?

Here’s how: First, subscribe on YouTube. You might already be receiving word of episodes of The Cool Parts Show going live, but raising the YouTube number will help raise the flag higher.

Then, just as valuable, give some thought to who in your network could benefit from deeper understanding of additive manufacturing. Social media is one way to share broadly, but your own personal outreach to people you think might be interested could be even more effective.

And within that outreach, don’t forget young people. Or their teachers. Young “makers” today are the engineers and manufacturers of tomorrow, and we would love to encourage them by letting them see what the industrial versions of the 3D printers they know are enabling companies and inventors to achieve.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy our show.