China Concerned About 3D Printing?

We know the vision: consumer owns an advanced 3D printer. They buy 3D designs online and print out their desired objects onsite within moments. Ta da!

 

We also know the implications of this vision: Dead factories, fewer trains and trucks hauling finished goods around, perhaps a slightly greener world, more 3D designers and fewer manufacturing workers. This, we think, could be generally positive. 

 

Unless you're China. 

 

China, that Great Factory For The World, could be severely impacted in the future if the vision came to pass. This is the premise of a long article in Forbes, where they say: 

 

Such manufacturing is being enabled by the long march of technology.  And it surely worries China.  While economic historians remind us of the importance of the twin innovations of free markets and financial structures, both those factors pale against the power of technology to create productivity, and thus the wealth of the world.

 

If the future factory is a machine born of emerging technologies and requires de minimus labor, on average such factories will be located preferentially where the skills and culture exist to invent and implement.  And, on average, you’d put such factories close to demand.  

  

The idea is that over the long term, technology becomes less expensive while the cost of labor continually increases. In order to be productive, you must leverage technology to achieve the best result. 

 

What do we think? We agree, although the time frame for this is questionable. Current inexpensive (and even expensive) 3D printers have huge limitations on what they can produce. Typical printed objects have no where near the variety of materials possible in conventional mass production. 

 

But that will gradually change over time, and we'll probably see 3DP starting to chip away at mass manufacturing in a few years. 

 

Via Forbes

Additive or Subtractive?

Something struck us the other day when thinking about the variety of 3D printing approaches. Traditional manufacturing is typically "subtractive", in that you take a large chunk of material, say a granite cube, length of wood or a 17 tonne cube of solid titanium and go at it with tools, manual or automated. When the smoke clears, material has been "subtracted" from the original object to "reveal" the final item. Interestingly, Michelangelo believed every stone had a sculpture hidden within it echoing this process.

 

Subtractive manufacturing can be wasteful. Consider the titanium cube that might be milled down to a final object comprised of only 10% of the original cube's mass. Sure, you might be able to recycle the shaved-off bits, but that's not going to be efficient.

 

Step forward to the 21st century where we have "Additive" manufacturing. In this approach there is no original material to subtract from. Instead, we simply deposit new material in an "additive" way to gradually build up an object from nothing. We do this with extruders, laser sintering, powder fusing and other approaches. But they are all additive. 

 

Or are they?

 

Consider the case of Solido and MCOR, who use sheet-based additive manufacturing approaches. In this approach, a flat sheet represents a layer that is added. Then the machine removes (subtracts?) the areas of the sheet that are not required. The question then is, are MCOR and Solido additive or subtractive? We think they are both because they add layers, but subtract from each layer. 

 

To print on one of these machines you must visualize the input material: a stack of sheets, plastic or paper. Your object has to be contained within that stack. So like Michelangelo, we believe every stack has an object hidden inside. Even pancakes.

Specialized 3D Bikes

Those ultra-cool bikes from manufacturer Specialized made from carbon fibre just don't appear. They're designed very carefully - using 3D printing technology.

 

The process begins when Specialized engineers design a bike using a 3D modelling tool. Their objective is to produce something that not only is technically brilliant, but also looks good. The entire bike is modelled digitally before anything else happens. 

 

Then when the design is thought to be as good as possible, it's printed on a Dimension 1200 3D printer. At that point, they have in their hands a plastic model - the bike's frame, in life size actual dimensions. Strangely, the designers then go at the model with hand tools and material to add or subtract, refining to the final shape. This ensures both function and beauty are obtained. 

 

Be sure to watch the video that shows the rest of the manufacturing process, transforming the finished 3D model into a sleek carbon fibre frame. 

 

Via CozyBeeHive