(3DPrint.com PRO is available only to subscribers) Out at Sea If a team of engineers were tasked with creating the ideal hypothetical environment for testing advanced manufacturing’s potential, they might come up with something that looks a lot like Australia.Everyone is familiar with the term “landlocked”, but territories can also be “sealocked”.However, the latter term isn’t nearly as well-defined as the former, since the features that make a nation sealocked or not aren’t quite so black-and-white.
That is, while every island nation is sealocked to some degree, it wouldn’t really make sense to use the term to describe, say, the UK, which is rather easily accessible for the rest of the global economy.Indeed, the extent to which an island nation’s existence as an island makes it inaccessible to the global economy is essentially what determines whether or not it is sealocked.Along these lines, the term may be most applicable to nations in Oceania, the remotest region of Earth that still maintains routine interchange with the rest of the international economic order.
Curiously enough… Feature image courtesy of Additive Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (AMCRC): A technician oversees a fleet of desktop 3D printers at a production hub in Australia.Subscribe to read the remaining PRO Analysis.Subscribe Already a subscriber? You are set to receive premium content directly to your inbox twice a month.
