The Faces of Additive Manufacturing: Olaf Diegel

Our so-called The Faces of Additive Manufacturing series focuses on the pioneers who have shaped today’s 3D printing industry. Following our last portrait of Terry Wohlers, famous for his annual reports on the sector, we were present to you Olaf Diegel, Professor of Additive Manufacturing at the University of Auckland. Olaf Diegel understood several years ago the potential of 3D printing for the design of complex parts, whether for musical instruments, medical prostheses or jewellery. 3Dnatives went to meet him to learn more about his vision of the sector.

3DN: Could you introduce yourself and your work in regards to AM?

I am currently a professor of additive manufacturing at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, where my area of expertise is in designing for additive manufacturing. Previous to this, I was heavily involved in product development, both in research on how to bring better products to market faster, and as a practitioner where I helped companies with their product development from finding a problem to be resolved or a market/user need, to the detailed engineering design, to the manufacturing and getting the product out to market. Over my career, I have brought well over 100 products to market in areas including theatre lighting products, home health monitoring products, marine products, musical instruments, etc.

It is this work in product development that first got me interested in additive manufacturing (or rapid prototyping, as it was known at the time). This was in the mid-90s where I would use AM strictly as a prototyping tool to test that my designs would work before investing a lot of money in production tooling. But then, as the technologies evolved over the years, I started to get more and more interested in how to use AM for production, rather than just for prototyping.