What industries need to understand about 3D printing

3D printing is slowly but surely revolutionizing how we think about manufacturing products and components in terms of availability and customizing. Jouni Partanen, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Aalto University, Finland, considers that the main implications of 3D printing for the future are clear, and engineers should always keep them close to mind, when designing new products.

As one of the prominent future-now areas in industry, 3D printing gives wings to imagination, when thinking about material use in manufacturing. Jouni Partanen describes the current use of the technology in industry.

“R&D is a definitely a hotbed for 3D printing, and has been already since 15 years in for example automobile industry. It is possible to shorten the R&D process. This area makes up two thirds of the industrial use for the technology. One third is in manufacturing, mainly in producing lighter shapes”, Partanen states.

A famous case from China witnessed the printing of complete houses in a fairly short time. Partanen also mentions companies from California, who are looking for financing to develop printing of buildings on a commercial scale. He also weights in that despite the promising news – and the fact that 3D printing business is growing 50% yearly in some areas – the field is still relatively small.

“These types of exotic news are driving things forward at the moment, but 3D printing hardware is at a challenging phase in industry in my opinion. The business share of 3D is under a billion dollars worldwide at the moment, whereas the share of other forms of manufacturing is over ten to hundred times bigger. Development in the software side is incredibly fast, but the limits are on the hardware side. Many engineers, who are involved in product development, have still to grasp the full potential of 3D printing.”

To integrate the benefits of 3D printing better in industry, Partanen encourages engineers to keep three key aspects in mind: the possibility to optimize and customize material, short manufacturing runs and digital warehousing of spare parts and products.

“3D printing is already strong in different shapes and forms. Before this technology became available, strength and lightness were difficult to optimize. The principle is to remove material from all other places, except where it is needed. Conformal cooling is one of these applications, which are already working. Cooling conduits, which used to be straight, can be modelled and optimised according to purpose, made for example lighter. The shape is not limited to only, what some old drill can perform. This type of form optimization is still fairly expensive, but has been applied in for example jet engine design.”

In addition to optimising material composition in products to improve lightness, making it adapt better to different atmospheric conditions, or saving raw material, customizing is a proved advantage.

“Customizing is a broad field. For example personified hearing aids that are completely inside the ear, are currently produced completely by 3D printing, because the size of the run is basically always one, and when the object might be lost, it can be easily replaced by retrieving the custom specifications from a database and producing another one. The combination of the shortness of the run, customization and digital warehousing all come true in this case.”

At some point 3D printing might also make it possible to produce completely new materials by combining existing materials into new compounds. According to Partanen this is not yet a reality, but a realistic direction nevertheless.

“New material compositions are a very strong vision. Many actors on the field have started using the concept of digital material. An extension of this idea might be a tool, which has a firm surface, but a well conductive inner-side, allowing heat to exit quicker. This is one of the concepts, which are understood currently and estimated probable.”

Possibilities in the short run

In some cases there might be a limited amount of a certain machine in use in industry around the world. Using mass production methods for casting moulds and producing for example spare parts for a machine like this is not cost efficient, and Jouni Partanen brings in 3D printing as the natural way to go.

“In manufacturing small runs by traditional means, the costs of a tool or a mould can rise extremely high. In this situation 3D printing provides a better option. In practice, 3D printing is not used much in making spare parts, because the technology is still not on a suitable level. In the future, this will become relevant, since warehousing spare parts is definitely an issue for businesses. These new methods can make spare part warehouses completely digital, and production can be optimised completely by where and when the items are needed.”

By cutting corners in the manufacturing chain with 3D, the process will be quicker and it also allows products to be tested in use, while keeping expenses low at the same time.

“Getting products to the markets fast is key here. First run of a particular product can be printed, and after the business is understood better, a mould can be casted and the product can be put to mass production by conventional and cheaper means. This has come true in the case of a particular robotics company, which used 3D printed components in the start-up phase and after the product had been tested and proved suitable for the markets, they moved on to injection moulding.”

For some companies, 3D printing might be the only reasonable manufacturing method.

“A company, which produces 360 degree cameras for helicopters decided to adopt 3D printing as their primary manufacturing method, because the short runs made it sensible. For very small, but complicated objects, 3D printing might even become a viable mass production method in the future”, Partanen offers.

Jouni Partanen works as Professor of Advanced Production Methods at Aalto University

Image credit: nikkytok/Shutterstock.com