CityU EngD (EM) Gathering Talk – Innovative Entrepreneurship & 3D Printing

Engineering Doctorate EngD (EM) Society organized a talk on 20 Sep 2014 (Saturday night) at Alumni Function Room in 11/F., AC3, CityU. We are honor to invite Dr. SUN Hongyi (Associate Professor, SEEM Dept., CityU) to present his recently research project granted HK$1.35 Million entitled “Professional Development Platform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship” and I was honor to share 3D Printing in Science Parks.

In the beginning, we introduced ourselves to each other and shared EngD study life. Dr. Rocky Lam briefed the aims of this gathering talk to communicate and connect EngD cohorts for exchanging expertise and creating business opportunities.

Dr. Sun was the first guest speaker and his introduced the CityU education Platform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CePIE) which was a platform for online course to link up Government, Industry and University. It also like supermarket for sharing and trading IP, technology, products, solutions and training. It was supported by UGC and CityU with the funding HK$1.35 Million.

Then Dr. Sun demonstrated the platform at http://www.cityu.edu.hk/CePIE/ and he invited us to join the Industrial Mentor.

After that he mentioned his trademarked Innovation course named “3333”. The first 3 means “Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship”. The second 3 means “New idea, product and business”. The third 3 means “Thinking, Participating and Going to Market”. The last 3 means “Capability of Learning, Adopting and Leading”.

I was the second speaker and my topic was “3D Printing in Science Park”. I briefed the history and technology of 3D Printing. The concept of 3D printing was able to trace back to 1892 US Patent named “Manufacture of Contour Relief Map”. However the first 3D printer was patented in late 1980s. In late 1992, SEEM (previous named MEEM) Dept. of CityU jointly with the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC), a government subsidised agency, developed a technology transfer project on stereolithography (SLA) technology for rapid plastic prototype making (KS Chin, 1998).

Then I introduced five 3D printers which serviced in Science Park as follows:
1. Replicator 2X (Makerbot)
http://store.makerbot.com/replicator2
* Raw material is ABS filament, low cost 3D printer
2. Objet500 Connex3 (Stratasys)
http://www.stratasys.com/3d-printers/design-series/precision/objet500-connex3
* Raw material is resin, advanced multi-materials color 3D printer
3. ProJet660 Pro (3Dsystem)
http://www.3dsystems.com/3d-printers/professional/projet-660pro
* Raw material is powder, color 3D printer
4. Roland Modela ProII MDX-540
http://www.rolanddg.com/product/3d/3d/mdx-540/mdx-540.html
* Soft material used wood and plastic, Milling machine with 4 axis
5. Lumex Avance-25 (Matsuura)
http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/contents/products/lumex.html
* Laser sintering and milling
* Raw material is metal powder

Finally, I shared some 3D Printing products which made by using ProJet660 Pro to EngD cohorts.

After that we discussed in different topics about EngD studying and future cooperation between industry and university.

Reference:
Engineering Doctorate (Engineering Management) - http://www.cityu.edu.hk/seem/pdf/EngD_Leaflet.pdf
CityU Engineering Doctorate Society - http://www.engd.org/
CityU education Platform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CePIE) - http://www.cityu.edu.hk/CePIE/
KS Chin (1998) “Implementation of Rapid Prototyping Technology — A Hong Kong manufacturing industry's perspective”, Int. J. Adv. Manuf. technol. Vol.14, pp570-579.