The Additive Manufacturing Group (AMG), University of Lagos and the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) have issued a communique on the first bi-local international conference on Additive Manufacturing (AM) in Nigeria, which highlights the need for Nigeria to embrace AM in its quest to achieve rapid industrial growth. The communique, which was publicly presented at the RMRDC House in Lekki area of Lagos, reiterated the use of AM processes and the potential of AM to significantly reduce the time and cost involved in tool production, saying that the necessary know-how is developed in case studies and passed to SMEs within the framework of technology transfer.
“All SMEs can significantly increase their competitiveness and achieve sustainable business success by using additive manufacturing technology,” it said.
According to the communique, AM offers huge opportunities for rapid industrialisation of Nigeria in view of its innumerable potentials that can enable the country to leapfrog into the 4th Industrial revolution, stressing that AM can help solve increasing youth restiveness across the country due to its unique potentials for youth empowerment and wealth creation in recognition of its wide applications across all the manufacturing sectors.
“AM is a relatively new technology and therefore requires concerted efforts from both the public and private sectors of the economy in order to drive and sustain it to acceptable scale in the industrial and academic sectors,” they urged. The communique placed RMRDC by virtue of its mandate, to serve as the launchpad to help propagate the potentials of AM amongst the stakeholders, especially in the Organised Private Sector of the nation’s economy the need for cooperation by the government, industry and academia in order to create proper educational roadmaps for indigenisation of AM technology.
It pointed out that it is necessary to place much emphasis on train-the-trainers’ workshops with the aim of ensuring transferable skills acquistion as against theoretical approaches.
The communique resolved that there is a need for an Inventory of all AM technology practitioners and agencies in Nigeria, including academia working within the space, create awareness campaign across board with a view to showcasing the potentials in AM through design competitions and selective hands-on workshops and increased cooperation amongst government, industry and academia for the purpose of harnessing the gains inherent in AM to develop manufacturing in Nigeria.
“There is also a need to redesign the school curricula to accommodate AM 3D coursework including materials extrusion fundamentals and customisation process, replacement and/or supplement of traditional service processes and spare parts supply strategies by AM to achieve cost-efficiency in production of batch size on demand,” they added.
The communique also stated the need for RMRDC to serve as the focal point for the public sector in order to hasten the adoption and implementation of the right policy framework relating to AM technology, maintaining that RMRDC needs to spearhead policy thrust to promote and/or support efforts at domesticating available AM researches, developments and infrastructure.
“Such policy thrust may require incentives to manufacturers that are willing to adapt AM processes in their operations, including tax relief on AM equipment and technologies. The provision of AM centre/hub for the training of personnel on CAD design, 3D printing and curriculum development is germane to capacity building and the effective adoption of the AM technologies in Nigeria,” the communique said.
The first international Conference on AM has provided the landscape for the govemment, industry, Academia and International collaborators to work together for the promotion and growth of the potentials in AM in Nigeria. There is therefore the need to sustain the initiative and even expand on the successes achieved so far.
The first International conference on AM in Nigeria was organised to enable stakeholders chart a way forward and leverage on global trends in the domestication, policy formulation and adoption of
Additive manufacturing (AM) by Industries in Nigeria.
At the end of the 3 days technical paper presentations, workshops, networking, experience-sharing and exhibitions by erudite schloars from within and outside the shores of Nigeria as well as manufacturers, participants observed that traditional service processes and spare parts supply strategies can be
replaced or supplemented by additive manufacturing as this enables individual and cost-efficient production in batch size on demand.