Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Mechanical Engineering just devised a system that uses multiple large language models to monitor and correct 3D printers in real time, as spotted by TechXplore. While additive manufacturing techniques have revolutionized the field, especially for customized products and prototype models, most 3D printers are still prone to errors. For example, Prusa3D said about 7% of its prints on the MMU2S failed, while a further 19% required user attention (although they did not fail).
This meant that users need to keep an eye on the printing process to ensure that everything goes as planned. While this might not be an issue for home and casual users running one or two 3D printers, it starts to be a problem if you’re using them for manufacturing. Although there’s no global standard, many manufacturers aimed for failure rates of about 5% in the 1980s. But today, the standard is closer to 0.1%, meaning a 7% failure rate is incredibly wasteful and makes 3D printing less competitive on quality than other manufacturing processes.
