LATEST NEWS News Archive
September 29, 2011 LFF Director David Bourell received the Academic Career Award at the 5th International Conference on Advanced Research in Virtual and Rapid Prototyping in Leiria, Portugal. The award acknowledges his “outstanding works and achievements in the field of Additive Manufacturing.
September 1, 2011 LFF member Dr. Rick Neptune was promoted to Full Professor in Mechanical Engineering. Rick's area of research deals with custom prosthetics and orthotics.
August 8, 2011 LFF Director Dave Bourell received the SFF Symposium International Freeform and Additive Manufacturing Excellence (FAME) Award. This award is given annually to an individual who has made significant research contributions to the field over an extended period of time.March 5, 2011 LFF students Phani Vallabhajosyula and Kumaran Chakravarthy operated a demonstration of additive manufacturing at UT as part of the "Explore UT" community open house.
March 1, 2011 LFF Director David Bourell was awarded Fellow status by the materials society TMS. Among the most selective of fellow grades, this pinnacle award recognizes outstanding contributions to the practice of metallurgical science and technology. At any point in time, there may be only 100 living TMS Fellows.
Welcome to the website for the Laboratory for Freeform Fabrication (LFF) at The University of Texas at Austin.
The LFF was founded in 1988, following student Carl Deckard's remarkable invention of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), one of the first freeform fabrication processes. Faculty in the LFF are active in research in diverse areas related to freeform fabrication. I hope you will peruse other parts of the website to see what current research is being undertaken. We have several commercial SLS sinterstations as well as a number of research machines constructed on campus. The LFF is host to the Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, first held in 1990 and the longest continuously running annual meeting dealing with research in freeform fabrication.
Researchers in the LFF represent considerable depth and breadth, including process development, materials, applications and modeling. Research includes major funding from national funding agencies as well as industrial projects of varying size and duration. An Industrial Affiliates Program provides special opportunities for industry to interact with the Lab.
The LFF is part of the Advanced Manufacturing Center which was established in 2004 to initiate, support, and coordinate research and education in advanced manufacturing and materials processing, to disseminate the results of this research to potential users, and to promote and provide resources for education in this field.
I invite you to visit the LFF if your travels bring you to the Austin area.
David L. Bourell
Director, Laboratory for Freeform Fabrication