Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
Understanding 3D Printing and its many amazing uses!
Material source: Strategic Intelligence, World Economic Forum
3D printing has already revolutionised the ways that parts are designed and manufactured. Other applications of the technology – bioprinting human organs, printing affordable housing, etc – were until recently the stuff of science fiction! Now, breakthroughs are being achieved in all of these areas, and 3D printing is showing promise as a means to solve many of mankind’s most pressing issues. Let’s look at its uses in some fields:
1. 3D Printing for Construction. The technology could help address the global shortage of affordable housing. It enables new, significantly faster and more economical approaches to construction. Construction-related 3D printing processes differ slightly from traditional 3D printing, due to the size of the desired product; they involve a large, robotic arm that moves via railways that are installed around a building area as they extrude concrete, layer by layer.
These large machines are able to create complete buildings, use less material than traditional construction by producing honeycomb-structured walls with minimal density, and require lower-cost materials that can keep expenses to a minimum. Before it can be made available broadly for commercial use, however, construction-related 3D printing must be further tested, standardised, and approved by regulators.
2. 3D Printing in Space. The technology is poised to provide everything from space station spare parts to Moon colonies! 3D printing (or “additive manufacturing”) has the potential to optimise space missions in the future, and transform the aerospace industry. In 2018, the world’s first satellite with a 3D-printed exterior casing (printed at Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia) was launched from the International Space Station – in order to test how such components behave in a vacuum.
In addition, 3D printing technology is being used to build everything from rocket engines to support brackets for satellites. However, the biggest impact 3D printing will have on space missions will not be on the ground but in enabling manufacturing in space. Long-term space missions, for example, regularly need replacement parts that must now either be carried onboard or shipped from Earth. This can be challenging; space missions have strict limits on on-board weight and cargo room, and a shipment blasted into orbit can cost $22,000 per kg of payload. A 3D printer could offer a faster and relatively inexpensive way to manufacture parts on-site.
3. Flexible Manufacturing. 3D printing is enabling more customised production. It means that the cost of making something has been liberated from a need to make a lot of it. Traditionally, manufacturers have been bound by the principle that the more they produce, the more costs decline. 3D printing can alter this dynamic by, for example, reducing or even eliminating the need for tooling – the process of developing series of moulds and dies needed for production.
3D printing can therefore drastically decrease the time needed to bring a new product to market, slash the costs associated with making moulds, and lead to a situation where the cost-per-produced-part is not related to the potentially high overall cost of production. When a single 3D printing machine is able to produce complex parts requiring limited post-processing steps, the economy of scale associated with traditional large factories becomes obsolete.
4. Environment Impact. The technology has shown promise in terms of helping cut energy use, waste and emissions. 3D printing is capable of significantly reducing the amount of raw materials necessary to make things. Conventional machining processes, for example, are based on the “subtractive” removal of material from larger blocks, until a final geometry is achieved. By way of contrast, 3D printing successively adds material in a layer-by-layer process, and selectively applies it only where it is needed – facilitating a “near net shape” technique that produces parts as near as possible to a final shape, and eliminates much of the need for finishing.
The resulting lack of waste material is due to the fact that only a small amount of total material needs to be re-machined in order to achieve a desired surface roughness, or to remove support structures.
(This briefing is based on the views of a wide range of experts from the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network and is curated in partnership with Roland Logé, Associate Professor, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). To read the entire article, visit https://bit.ly/31uufFQ)
Career
Mobile gaming is one of the fastest growing industries in India
Excerpts from a story by HT Brand Studio
According to a report, ‘The Power of Mobile Gaming in India’, released by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and Kantar IMRB in association POKKT, India features among the five biggest mobile gaming markets in the world. The mobile gaming industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world especially in India.
Statista has estimated the mobile gaming market in India will be worth about 2.4 billion dollars in 2020, up from 600 million dollars in 2017. The popularity of mobile gaming is surging in India with three out of four Indian players enjoying mobile games minimum twice a day. Mobile gamers in India typically spend over an hour on their device each day – this is higher than the average of around forty-five minutes a day that is spent on video services like Netflix viewership.
Profile of a Indian Mobile Gamer
In the year 2018, Indians spent 6.92 hours a week on gaming, the global average has been 7.11 hours per week. The younger audience of between 26-45 years are driving the growth at around 25%, followed by the older audiences. It is projected that nearly one-third of the gaming population is aged over 35 years in India.
The Kantar IMRB report has explored the profile of mobile gamers in depth. Traditionally the gaming sector has been dominated by men, however female gamers are now equally inclined to invest in gaming as entertainment. Male gamers are more skewed towards adrenaline packed games featuring Action/Adventure and Racing/Sports games along with other genres. Female gamers on the other hand are more inclined towards mentally stimulating games such as Puzzle/Quizzes.
Free games offering premium features
India is a value seeking and price sensitive gaming market, with most mobile gamers searching and playing free alternatives. By taking advantage of this developers tend to focus more on creating free-to-play apps which then become monetised through the option of purchasing virtual goods and premium features.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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