Crook,
I am not at all certain when a standard will be officially announced and accepted, however I believe that at some point in time it will be announced and established. Until that time, the lack of a standard will function as a HUGE threshold to overcome for many OEMs before they will commit to a large scale AM production effort. Only after there is a standard will many folks agree to purchase PR3D, an IPQA approach that at the current time can best be described as may or may not being acceptable to the powers that be when they finally establish a standard. Not too many out there have GE's ability to certify their own parts nor do many have the resources to support an AM development effort in the way GE can. Until a standard is established, more OEM's are going to limit their AM efforts towards prototypes and such. Not the focus of PR3D.
I believe that the use of PR3D in printing fuel nozzles for delivery in 2016 will act as a consensual validation type of standard.."if it is good enough for GE..." However, that is not the same as an independent endorsement. On the other hand, look at the constituency of the group in the EWI contract..including GE and Honeywell who have been working with Sigma for a substantial time through the JTDAs. I doubt that either of them are going to oppose PR3D's conceptual basis and application principles as being a standard when they have been active in the development and refinement. Hard to believe that Mark,on behalf of Sigma, at those meetings would argue against PR3D...so it looks to me like at the end of the contract period there will be some sort of announcement which includes proposed standards with which PR3D is compliant. No idea what the form of the announcement would be or the subsequent steps needed before some sort of official standard is written and established, or how long that process will take. But, I believe it will happen. More likely than not, and high enough likelihood against the possible return to me if it does happen that I am willing to accept the risk of losing $ if it does not happen.
There are other hurdles for FAA part approval, independent of AM or traditional manufacturing techniques.
Additional thresholds to overcome include the fact that AM presents a new tool for engineers which can produce results unavailable by alternative manufacturing methods. Clearly, this presents an area which will require time to fully understand the opportunities and limitations inherent to design specifically for AM.
Many companies may not be willing to purchase a PR3D system until they are closer to the need for production runs.
You say 5 to 7 years, and when I got into this stock I calculated for my investment a 3 to 5 year period - that was nearly a year and a half ago, so I still have 3.5 years on the long end. Maybe mine is a slight underestimate and your is a slight overestimate...maybe the interm announcements of proposed standards which PR3D would satisfy will shorten the window ...lots of moving parts, so I do not know that we basically disagree to any significant extent on this.
patience and GLTA
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