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• In the report “AM for Data Centers: a 3D Printing Market Opportunity” that I wrote last year for Additive Manufacturing Research (AMR), I referenced Theodore Maiman, the man credited with...
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In the report “AM for Data Centers: a 3D Printing Market Opportunity” that I wrote last year for Additive Manufacturing Research (AMR), I referenced Theodore Maiman, the man credited with inventing the first working laser, while he was employed by Hughes Aircraft Company. Maiman famously said that lasers were “a solution in search of a problem,” and I used that as an analogy for how the complex geometries enabled by AM are a solution in search of a problem that is thermal management.
I didn’t realize that some version of Hughes Aircraft Company (as in Howard Hughes) is still around: it is now HRL Laboratories, a Malibu-based R&D venture that is, fascinatingly, jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors. I bring up this anecdote not solely to plug the data center report, but, more importan