Manufacturing Day is a day to evaluate how we make things, like should I adopt additive manufacturing?
Our nation was built by makers. We are builders of everything from airplanes to toys. We have remained competitive in many areas by employing innovative technologies. Manufacturing is one of the best ways to generate wealth, and it built our country.
To many, additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a new way of making things. In reality, it is about the same age as laser cutting. Each technology has found its own niche. Metal fabricators have widely adopted laser cutting as a flexible, productive way to cut metal. Hearing aid and invisible tooth aligner manufacturers have widely adopted additive manufacturing to mass customize their products. Laser cutting has evolved with faster drives and controls to match the cutting speeds of the new high-power fiber lasers. Additive manufacturing has taken a very different road.
Additive manufacturing is not one process. It is many. As such, there are new developments weekly in processes and capabilities. Many are solutions in search of an application. So, how do you determine if additive manufacturing is right for you and your company? There are the classic questions that are the first step but we are challenging these questions every day.
Are you already making this part using conventional methods? This is a pretty good clue that this part may already be designed, optimized and tooled for a conventional process like machining or injection molding.
What are your production quantities? Do you have small quantities? If you have lot sizes of 1, you might have a great additive manufacturing application. If you have a plastic part and quantities of 10,000, you might think that injection molding is the way to go, but there are additive processes that could be cheaper than investing in tooling for a 10,000-piece run.
What is the price of tooling to do this with conventional methods? If the tool is $10,000 and you need one part, then a $10.00 3D printed part looks pretty good. If once you have the tooling, the incremental cost to make a part is $0.10, then the breakeven point for a $10 AM part is just over 1,000 parts (1,010). If the cost of the additive part in quantity is $0.20 then the break-even point is 100,000 pieces. If you make small plastic parts, you could probably take advantage of additive manufacturing.
Do you already have tooling? If so, there is little chance that additive will pay off. There are exceptions, though. At the end of a product’s life, replacement parts may be a good, high-profit business for your company. Making parts and putting them on the shelf may be a waste of resources. While the cost to make the part may be inexpensive, the cost of shelf space and inventorying the part year after year could be costly. If your annual need is small, you might throw away the tooling and make the parts using an additive process. Casting patterns are expensive to catalog and store. Maybe using AM to print in casting sand may be much more effective. Trim tools for composite manufacturing are bulky and difficult to store. A large format additive manufacturing technology may be less expensive to make a new tool when you need it.
Was the part designed for additive manufacturing? This is a big hurdle. If you have a part that was designed for a traditional manufacturing process it may just cost more and take longer to make with additive manufacturing. If it is a part that already has tooling made it will probably be much cheaper to make it with the traditional method. This is an interesting problem because who designs parts for additive manufacturing if you don’t have additive manufacturing capability? You design parts for the processes you have or the ones you are familiar with. This one catch often keeps companies from adopting additive manufacturing.
Is there no other way to make the part? Some parts may have internal passages that cannot be made any other way. Some medical implants have scaffolds to knit with bone structures that are basically impossible to make with any method other than additive manufacturing.
Is it a fabricated metal part? Oftentimes, a fabricated metal part could be laser cut and formed on a press brake. The entire process takes minutes and is not expensive. No additive process can give you as good of a part as fast for the same price.
Can you consolidate parts? Often, additive manufacturing can provide a solution to combine parts to reduce assembly time and simplify manufacturing. Consolidating parts can simplify your supply chain and make it more robust. Fewer vendors and fewer parts and processes.
Can you achieve a market advantage by customizing your product? If you are making prosthetics, it is obvious that you need to make them to fit the particular user. What is not so obvious is customizing both common and luxury vehicles with additive parts. What about your product?
Can you improve the performance of the part? Conformal cooling in injection molding tooling can double your productivity. Improved fuel burn from better fuel nozzles can improve your aircraft engine performance.
Can you reduce the weight of the part? While this is not always important, it can be very important to aerospace, automotive, or racing customers. Weight relates to fuel efficiency, and that is of ever-increasing importance.
Can the part be redesigned to save expensive material? Typically, additive manufacturing processes are frugal with material. Subtractive processes remove material and discard it. Additive processes add material where it is needed. Again, it is not an easy question. Sometimes, powdered material for AM is more expensive than a block or sheet of the same material. Some powder bed processes are not very good at recovering excess powder. When material gets expensive, you probably should evaluate additive manufacturing as an option.
Can using additive manufacturing give your company an edge for another reason? Will adding additive manufacturing improve your reputation as an innovative company? Will your customers or employees think you are a technology leader? Your brand is everything you do. Does being viewed as high-tech play into your brand message? Does challenging your engineering team to use additive for prototyping and tooling give you an edge?
Does your lead time for tooling or prototype parts put you at a competitive disadvantage? If so, you might find an inexpensive, easy-to-use additive solution to your lead time problems.
So, sorry to give you questions and not answers. In order to get answers, you need to dig into your applications. There is help available. We have kept abreast of the latest developments in additive manufacturing and can get you answers. Reach out to us for assistance in getting answers that are a comfortable fit for your business.