Nowadays, a new round of technology and industrial revolution is thriving on a global scale. As the representative technology of Industry 4.0, Additive Manufacturing has broken the limits of small-scale prototype manufacturing and gradually evolved into a major tool of mass industrial production. The global technological powers and emerging nations invariably support and bolster the Additive Manufacturing technology which is acknowledged as a new driver for future industrial development. Having accelerated in the integration of Additive Manufacturing technology and traditional industries, they are racing to seize the initiative for the future of the technology industry. The Chinese government has been attaching great importance to the Additive Manufacturing technology and has included it amongst the key development areas of the “Made in China 2025 plan”. According to the strategic plan formulated by the Party Central Committee and the State Council on picking up pace on China's transformation into building a strong manufacturing country and manufacturer of quality, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, worked together with 12 other ministries and commissions in 2017 to unveil the Action Plan for Additive Manufacturing Industrial Development (2017-2020) (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology [2017] No. 311) which is giving a great push for the development of Additive Manufacturing, and proving a strong support for the initiative of Manufacturer of Quality, meanwhile, offering new drivers into economic development.
As Fengtai Park was set up as one of the earliest of three Branch Parks of the Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park, it has become the window of the Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Center, while Fengtai District boasts a number of high-tech industrial clusters in the fields ranging from aerospace engineering, military-civilian integrated industry, rail transit facilities to biomedical etc. Among them, the aerospace industry and military-civilian integrated industry are seen as the two wings of the key projects of the Fengtai District, and are made up of 27 military research institutes and seven major military industry enterprises including China Aerospace Science and Industry Group, China Aerospace Science and Technology Group, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation. On this basis of technological strength of the Fengtai District, Additive Manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is considered the smart manufacturing technology which has been listed as one of the priorities in the “Made in China 2025 plan” and will also play a significant role in promoting the Fengtai District as an industrial strategy upgrade for the Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Center. Thus, the People's Government of Fengtai District, Beijing municipality proactively introduces the enterprises specialized in 3D printing technology, and speeds up its efforts in integrating the Additive Manufacturing into the core industrial deployment of the Fengtai Science and Technology Park so as to drive the strategic development goal of industrial upgrading. The government is pursuing in building up a 3D printing industry operation platform of the Zhongguancun Fengtai Park 3D Printing Digital Innovation Center that will be driven by the 3D printing technology, backed up the government's policies, and focusing on pushing the technology's industrial application. In addition, the government also has promoted the further integration of 3D printing technology, aerospace engineering, rail transit facilities, biomedical, military and civilian integrated industry, as well as other industries.
In 2018, the 2018 Global Additive Manufacturing Innovation Competition was sponsored by the People's Government of Fengtai District of Beijing Municipality and the Beijing Municipal Commission of Science and Technology, jointly hosted by the Fengtai District Commission of Science and Technology of Beijing Municipality, the Management Committee of Fengtai Park of Zhongguancun, Beijing Fengtai Technology Park Construction & Development Co., Ltd, and the Zhongguancun Fengtai Park 3D Printing Digital Innovation Center, with the aim of attracting and promoting the promising projects and professional teams in the 3D printing field, accelerating the beginning of prominent projects and transformation of technical outcomes, and promoting collaborative innovation and industrial upgrade.
Based on the successful launch of the competition held last year, we aim to continue and update the competition by holding the 2019 Innovation Application Competition for Global Additive Manufacturing and under the theme of IN(3D)NOVATION. The 2019 competition will feature the scaled application and industrialization prospect of 3D printing in key fields. Through the competition, the hosts aim to bring the 3D printing technology and innovation into the real world application so as to realize its value, to sparkle the ingenuity to come up with and stimulate the effective and creative 3D printing digital (design + materials + manufacturing) integral solutions.
The competition focuses on six fields, namely, aerospace engineering, automotive design and manufacturing, digital orthopedics, urban landscape and architecture, consumer goods upgrades - shoes, and the museum cultural innovation. By raising a real problem to be solved (i.e. from actual demand), the entries featuring the digital design, solutions integrating material application and manufacturing process, with innovation as the core, will be solicited from scientific research institutions, colleges, design firms, 3D digital technology companies, start-up teams and individuals both from home and abroad. Through the collected entries and printed materials, we will further integrate the cutting-edge technology and material advantages of 3D printing in digital manufacturing. Furthermore, featuring the ingenuity in digital design services dominating the advanced manufacturing, through scientific rigorous verification and demonstration, the competition event would provide a variety of industries the insights into the important value brought by 3D printing in terms of the product life cycle and industry chain, and would spur the enterprises to speed up innovation, integration, reshaping as well as upgrading through continuous practice and application.
