Additive manufacturing (AM) is hurtling into its wide and wonderful future. Right now heavy attention is being given to the promise AM offers to toy and fanciful trinkets makers or to heavyweights in the aerospace industry. Deservedly, there are great investments and enthusiastic anticipation in both of these markets.
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The true promise of AM, however, is likely to echo the evolution of the radio. The military and amateurs were eventually overtaken by the mainstream commercial manufacturers. Think of the Internet or a dozen other innovations and you can imagine how AM might migrate to greatly affect our lives and economy.
Of course we are all impressed by the tremendous advances that AM has ushered in for orthodontics, hearing aids, and prosthetics, but the wave of commercial opportunity will be much greater than the one-off applications we have seen so far. The “hockey stick” growth in U.S. manufacturing due to AM will show up when traditional manufacturers of anything, from personal items (toothbrushes, eyeglasses, shoes) to industrial parts (fasteners, complex assemblies, packaging, plastic injection-molded parts) to vertical industries (auto parts, publishing, electronics) each individually recognize the potential of AM in their business for a diverse set of opportunities.
They will embrace it not solely for final part production, or for demonstrating prototypes rapidly, but for enabling their traditional manufacture. It will be incremental but pervasive, impactful, and often hidden. Manufacturers will recognize that AM technologies will enable them to do what they are doing, or would like to do, at less cost and more effectively. They will notice their competitors entering the space.
A 3D printer in every home
AM will eventually make its way into the stuff in every household. Getting desktop 3D printers into the hands of our kids—at every library and kitchen table—will enable a new workforce. That workforce will develop an intuition to make stuff better, easier, and cheaper with AM inserted as appropriate. In the near future, designers of everyday products will integrate AM processes into bits or big chunks of manufacture. Then U.S. manufacturing will see its revitalization in a way that will make forthcoming generations proud. That is when we will see AM embedded within and enabling the production of many of our everyday products.
Giving every kid access to a 3D printer will revolutionize the way next-generation designers will think and approach problems. However, the same won’t be necessary for all manufacturers. There won’t be a need for every manufacturer to have a 3D printer on their shop floor to exploit AM technologies. The equipment, materials, and upkeep for AM can be expensive. There is the threat of obsolescence as new equipment and materials arise, and because of the diversity of technologies, there is great potential to overwhelm with choices and niches.
The need to maintain finely tuned equipment and a workforce that understands how to optimally turn the right knobs may be best reserved for two different camps: those manufacturers who will need to continuously print new parts to suit their needs, and the burgeoning service bureaus who will respond to the needs of manufacturers, for whom an investment in AM equipment would not be sound. Let’s call the former manufacturers who adopt AM by owning the technology in-house “AM-owning small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).” Let’s call the manufacturers who appreciate and accrue benefit from AM technologies without capital investments “AM-enabled SMEs.”
AM-owning SMEs, and to a greater extent, service bureaus, need to stay abreast of new materials as they are introduced, and evolving AM technologies as the research being conducted at labs meanders into readiness for market adoption. They fully invest in AM because it’s at the core of their businesses, much like a mill, CNC, or other hard production asset. They need to have the best-fit technologies and materials for their applications, the right knobs to tweak, and the workforce that can map the constantly refreshing applications against the best “knobs” at their fingertips.
AM-enabled SMEs, on the other hand, don’t need to stay fully current with the latest advances. Rather, they need to know trends and have a keen awareness of how continuous improvement investments can leverage AM. For example, a jig that would have otherwise been unfathomable through traditional production can be envisioned, CAD-modeled, and printed to enable complicated extrusions or assemblies that will delight a customer through design or cost savings. That is, AM-enabled SMEs will print ad hoc new molds or test units, fixtures, or jigs that will be one-offs within their shops. These will be the linchpins to new products, or help to maintain the advantages that those organizations have in the market through their existing product lines.
To reach an inflection point in how AM effects U.S. manufacture, every SME will need an understanding of what is possible, and the flexibility of mind to approach existing practices with a new framework. In my upcoming articles, I’ll share a few specific examples of how MEP centers have helped traditional SMEs understand the potential of deployed AM projects throughout various points within the lifecycle of their products, in ways that positively affect both their bottom and top lines.
First published Nov. 25, 2014, in the Manufacturing Innovation Blog.
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