Hawks,
Materialise certainly has a broad scope platform coming together that encompasses much more of the printing process than just IPQA. They are competition. No doubt about it. The encompassing platform is more than what SGLB can do. It therefore has an advantage over SGLB in that a customer may currently be interested in the ability to do everything else but IPQA for now; with the intention of bringing IPQA on line at a later date. The Inspector portion of the platform is an accessory item, just as PR3D is. While a customer could still install PR3D into the Materialise platform (because of the open architecture of the Materialise platform), I would think that unless PR3D is somehow vindicated and made the standard, that the Inspector option would have an advantage of revenue sales in Materialise platforms.
But the question remains as to whether Inspector is better than PR3D. I do not believe that Inspector is predictive through algorithm functions. It looks like Inspector is claimed to be predictive based only upon melt pool energy. I think it is at this point, at best, a 'me too' attempt at IPQA. Further, the entire Materialise platform hasn't come even close to the degree of testing that PR3D has gone through. I would imagine that SGLB's patent ownership will prevent Materialise from bringing on a truly predictive IPQA. Still, I don't expect anything to come of the SGLB/Materialise partnership. It seems clear that Materialise is going down its own road. We'll see who wins the race. I think it would take years for Inspector to be tested for function under the same conditions as has already been done for PR3D. And while that testing would be going on, PR3D would continue to advance and evolve as a product.
It is something to watch closely, but I can't see how they are even on the same lap with SGLB at this point in time.
All the best,
Silversmith
