Why is 3D printing more appropriately called additive manufacturing?
A new technology is gaining a traction that has the capability of changing the world, which is also called 3D printing. It is a revolution in the field of emerging technology that enhances the understanding of the long term global trends. 3D printing or additive manufacturing is therefore promoted as the primary spark causing a revolution in the industries. This technology helps the user is making customized products in a very low cost as it eliminates the risk of cost penalties in manufacturing (Campbell, et al., 2011). The report discusses the connection between 3D printing and additive manufacturing. The most valuable situations of 3D printing along with the advent of the process of 3D printing by making the different traditional manufacturing obsolete are discussed in the following paragraphs.
3D printing or AM is a process of manufacturing 3D solid objects making use of a digital file. It is also known as additive manufacturing when it is used within a manufacturing setting. Furthermore, a 3D printed object is created with the help additive process and is created by lying down back to back or successive layers of the materials that are generally used to create an object. The term additive is used for successive addition of the thin layers of thickness between 16 to 180 micron in order to create an object. These layers can therefore be seen as fine sliced horizontal cross section of the object. Thus the process of 3D printing is also used for constructing an object layer by layer. This is generally used for creating complex shapes as well.
The process of 3D printing is contrasting to the subtractive manufacturing that deals with cutting out or hollowing a piece of metal or plastic.
3D printing is used for producing complex shapes that uses very less materials than other traditional manufacturing methods. For the implementation of 3D printing, a 3D model of the element is created in the computer using CAD. A 3D model is then created and sliced into hundreds and thousands of horizontal layers with the help of a slicing software. After the process of slicing is completed, the 3D model can be feed into a 3D printer (Chua & Leong, 2014).
3D printing is well suited for small volumes of production as it mainly deals with the reshaping the development of product and manufacturing. The process of 3D printing is mainly used by the designers and engineers for conceptualizing and testing the different prototypes. 3D printing is well suited for little low volumes of the production because for a small manufacturer, the most critical part of the product development is its tooling. 3D printing effectively removes the need for production of tools, which in turn results in reducing time and labor. Low volume niche opportunities are capable of fetching higher prices but are expensive to make (Weller, et al., 2015). Therefore, 3D printing is increasingly used in this type of production that helps the organization in developing low volume niche opportunities. Traditional manufacturing focuses on providing a bulk manufacturing. Therefore, the cost of manufacturing low volumes is considerably higher. The cost of product design, development, set up and assembly can be reduced by a considerable amount with the help of 3D printing. Therefore, it is more actively used in low volume production.
Is 3D printing better suited for high or low volumes of production?
The 3D printing is most valuable in situations that includes manufacturing of important objects and devices such as hearing aids. Over 90% of all the hearing aids are made through 3D printing which is used by different people across the world (Suchubert , et al., 2014). 3D printing provides opportunities for faster development of ideas as this technology helps in developing process that might have taken months to complete in a relatively lesser time. Therefore, it is valuable in delivering time frame objects and projects. Furthermore, it is valuable for low volume projects as it helps in saving money. The traditional manufacturing methods that includes prototyping injection mold tools is an expensive investment in comparison to additive manufacturing or 3D printing. Furthermore, it acts as an effective risk mitigation technique as 3D printing allows creation of different parts or tools at much lower rates. This helps in developing a production ready prototype as a test prototype (Gibson, et al., 2014). The redesigning of prototype is further easier with 3D printing. Therefore, it can be said that 3D printing is most valuable in building the imagination. 3D printing allows developing every imaginable tools. The only requirement is drawing it virtually.
The different manufactures from the field of automotive, aerospace, discrete and medical products are implementing 3D printing technologies and continues to dominate in the field of 3D printing. According to the recent report and developments, 3D printing or more precisely, additive manufacturing is gaining huge momentum that could reach a take-off point within the next decade. According to the Ganter report 2010, the 3D printing is identified as the technology of transformation in the field of a trigger phase of hype cycle (Campbell, et al., 2011). Significant improvements have been found in the field of direct additive manufacture or 3 D printing of metal components that are made in the past years. With the emergence of additive manufacturing and 3D printing, engineers are successful in fabricating components from titanium and different steel alloys. Therefore, it can be concluded that 3D printing revolution can occur at both high end and low end converging towards the middle. The one end of the technology involves the high powered energy resources, while the other end focusses on reducing the cost as well as the complexity of AM processes. Therefore, it can be said that, major advances will be seen in the field of 3D printing in near future. The process of direct metal will continue to advance as the fundamental metallurgy improves (Wong & Hernandez, 2012). The cutting edge technology in 3D printing is expected to gain a broader acceptance and use in industrial application as a necessary need for emergence of design and manufacturing standards.
In what situations is 3D printing most valuable?
3D is definitely playing a key role in making the traditional manufacturing obsolete. This is particularly because 3D printing offers a variety of advantages over traditional manufacturing. The process of 3D printing makes use of specialized equipment in assembling an object layer by layer. Furthermore, the process of 3D printing does not require any special tooling, which in can save a lot of time and money that is generally spent on tooling the production line.
The rework on a prototype design can be done relatively faster in a 3D printer, while that of a traditional assembly would generally require a much more time to retool the line in order to churn out different parts of the prototype, which would be a waste of both time, money, material and labor. Therefore, on developing a prototype of a part, 3D printing has an increasing advantage over the traditional manufacturing (Vaezi, et al., 2013).
Another reason of traditional manufacturing being received a backseat is that, 3D printing is resource efficient as only the material that is consumed needs to pass through the extruder of the printer used for assembling the products (Lipson & Kurman, 2013). The traditional manufacturing methods or injection molds generally requires the use of extra materials for filling up the mold.
The 3D printing offers revolution in customization. In future, the 3D printing will allow the buyers to customize a product according to their specifications (Berman, 2012). It will most probably cover a huge part of the business in recent times. Furthermore, the 3D printed implants would increase the quality of life for the people in the society. The incredible ability of customization offered by 3D printing may help in better titanium bone implants, prosthetic limbs and devices used by the dentist (Ventola, 2014). Therefore, it can be said that the 3D printing can have a positive effect in people’s life.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that 3D printing is an emerging technology that has an ability to print almost every object that is designable. The process of 3D printing is also referred to as additive manufacturing because different layers are successively added in developing a structure. The report discusses the situations in which the 3D printing is most valuable and the future of 3D printing. Different researches proves that 3D printing is going to bring a revolution in the field of manufacturing and is most likely to make traditional manufacturing obsolete. The report discusses in brief the effect of 3D printing in people’s life. 3D printing is providing opportunities to the develop prototype and in manufacturing the end use products. It is a process of developing or creating physical object from a digital design. It is called additive manufacturing because a digital model is converted into a three dimensional physical object by addition of material layer by layer.
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