Read my full opnion piece over at TCT Magazine
Industrial 3D printing, additive manufacturing (AM), has hit the bottom of the Gartner Hype Cycle. Many people are giving up hope that it will ever come back. Hasn’t it been overblown, and is additive manufacturing maybe just a tool for niche applications?
Not at all.
Industrial 3D printing has enormous potential, and it will profoundly change our physical world. But it needs to grow up. It has to get away from boutique manufacturing and prototyping. Many people, including me, have been saying this for years, and it remains true today.
But nobody is acting on this. I am shocked to see widespread confusion about the core of the issue.
There are really just two challenges holding AM back. Both are complex — both are solvable.
- Few people know how to design for additive manufacturing. The tools for engineers are immature and still seem exotic. People generally resist change unless inevitable. As a result, few designs exist that make sense for AM. And there is no urgency, because of point 2.
- Even if you design something for AM, the cost for production of the part is prohibitive. So, why bother?
I spent the better part of the last decade in an attempt to help with the first point, and I am continuing on that journey.
But let’s talk about the second point.
Why is AM expensive?
AM is one of the most expensive manufacturing processes today.
Is this justified?
To answer that, let us zoom out for a second: How does AM fundamentally compare to conventional manufacturing?
Traditional production lines require complex tooling, purpose-built machines, laborious manual assembly steps. They are inflexible and require substantial upfront investment. Changing and improving the manufactured products is hard, because the factory needs to undergo costly reconfiguration.
Additive manufacturing, on the other hand, is flexible and reasonably standardised. AM allows for the production of parts that are functionally integrated, requiring less human labour in assembly. While AM cannot produce everything, it should at least be able to replace several steps in a conventional factory.
Ask someone outside the industry which one is the more expensive process? The answer would be clear.
We all know that additive manufacturing for end production needs streamlining and improvements, more automation, and integration with other processes. But a resulting digital production line, with AM at is core, should be vastly cheaper than a conventional one.
So, why is AM more expensive?
