Throughout the 90 ’ s early adopters highlighted progression by including tooling managers in the product development process much earlier — sometimes just days into the product life-cycle rather than the traditional weeks or months it would usually take . As a result , they could provide valuable input that helped avoid costly mistakes and speed up time-to-market . Further evolution saw tools themselves become a key application of 3D printing — cue the moniker “ Rapid Tooling .” This application area provided a highly cost-efficient way of producing tools for low and medium volumes of products . Again , this is still a viable application of AM technologies today .
As time moved on — and really getting traction in the last 10 years or so — 3D printing began to evolve from being a prototyping or tooling technology to a true “ production ” technology , highlighted in the terminology used to describe it today : Additive Manufacturing or industrial 3D printing .
With this shift , the ability for AM to continue its “ disruptive ” role was redoubled , as now the focus was on “ if ” and “ how ” the various AM processes , together with new and improved materials for AM , could truly replace or complement traditional manufacturing processes . The development of more robust , accurate , speedy , repeatable and cost-efficient machines , especially with the PBF process has reinforced the importance of industrial 3D printing as a true production technology , and today opportunities exist for the intelligent and judicious use of it as a viable and competitive serial production solution .
However , it was this shift that has also meant that design engineers that are developing products that will be produced with AM — or considering it — have had to alter their approach to design . As I mentioned before , designing for the manufacturing process has always been a thing , whether for injection moulding , casting , or CNC machining . The point here is that for Additive Manufacturing , the design rules are a bit different , in fact , they kind of break the mould !
In part 2 of this series , we will look at just how different DfAM is from traditional design for manufacturing approaches , the opportunities this brings in terms of product innovation and functionality , and the ability to optimise products in a way that reduces weight and material usage .
3DPRINTUK is a specialist in low volume production using state-of-the-art powder bed fusion ( PBF ) 3D printing systems with polymer materials . The company bridges the void that exists between prototyping and injection moulding , such that if tooling costs are prohibitively expensive for an application that does not require the volume demanded by injection moulding , 3DPRINTUK can provide a high quality , cost-effective and fast solution .
3DPRINTUK has mastered the process of 3D printing with polymer powders , with no need for support material , virtually no layer lines and short turnaround times . The company is an ideal partner for producing one-off prototypes through to production runs of tens of thousands of parts — on demand .
3D Printed jigs by Brushtec with complexity designed in . -3dprintuk 1
For further information , please visit www . 3dprint-uk . co . uk
Issue 57 PECM 23