Most people in industries are aware of additive manufacturing and the value it has brought to the world of engineering. To that end, most conversations around 3D printing in recent years have touched on “industrial additive manufacturing” but rarely enters the realm of true manufacturing.
When defining true manufacturing, it’s about a world of production—a world of production outside of an Etsy-style business. There are a lot of people out there starting businesses using 3D printers for production and building bigger businesses off of that success.
For example, this teenager built a business 3D printing custom archery markers. When he really wanted to grow his business, he got himself a CNC machine for subtractive manufacturing. Such is the way of both small and large businesses alike. There is value in additive manufacturing but capabilities are limited without larger (capital) equipment.
3D Printing’s Effort to Enter Manufacturing
There are new articles out there every day about how additive manufacturing is revolutionizing one effort or another. Whether talking about 3D printing houses for the homeless or designing revolutionary items that people can make at home, this technology is changing how the world designs and makes things.
Traditional manufacturing is a large-scale, mass-production business in which even the smallest successful shops own a couple of $40,000 to $50,000 machines. Those machines are robust and make real parts out of metals, alloys and plastics. A machine that costs tens of thousands of dollars is overkill if someone just needs to make something out of ABS unless they need it made fast and/or with any sort of precision.
While it can be argued that 3D printing has a place in manufacturing, its biggest pitfalls are the worst enemies of any manufacturing business: low precision and a lack of repeatability. Up until the past few years, any practical (read, not experimental) use of 3D printing has also been relegated to plastics.
Metal 3D printing and various forms of hybrid manufacturing, which combine additive manufacturing a raw form and finishing on a CNC machine, have emerged but are still limited in capability and require secondary operations to get a final part. Depending on needs, this could also be achieved, often faster and cheaper, with a molding process and CNC machining. Again, there is a lack of precision and repeatability.
Even though they aren’t fully capable of production work, many manufacturing businesses have embraced the capabilities of 3D printing in different ways, whether that’s creating custom organization tools, building scale models of the shop or making fixturing for lighter machining work.
Is 3D Printing Truly a Manufacturing Tool?
After having gone through a number of ways that 3D printing can and can’t be used in a manufacturing environment, none of these are truly manufacturing. 3D printers have become a tool in the shop, much like a wrench or a deburring tool, but they are still often relegated to prototyping-type work or a fast workaround if something breaks—3D printers or 3D-printed parts aren’t permanent manufacturing tools in the same way as a CNC machine.
So, are 3D printers truly a manufacturing tool? This could just be a question of both syntax and opinion. Since additive manufacturing technologies are already being used in industrial environments, the answer could simply be yes. There are lots of caveats and limitations to using 3D printers in these spaces, so the real question might be: How much is 3D printing a work-around device versus a truly valuable manufacturing tool?
Phil Vickery runs an engineering and fabrication business that leverages 3D printing in its facility. While Centerline Engineered Solutions doesn’t have an army of 3D printers producing parts at a massive scale, it does use the technology every day.
Some 3D printers, like those by Markforged, are capable of creating a composite material with carbon fiber and nylon. Centerline uses this material to create dies for a press brake. Forming steel parts on various press brake systems is a major component of the business, but it uses various dies.
According to Markforged, “In order to fabricate each part, Centerline has to make a unique punch and die. For many applications, the cost of this specialized tooling does not justify the expense of the part. By printing the tooling out of Onyx [carbon fiber and nylon composite] and reinforcing critical points with steel inserts, Centerline creates forming tooling at a vastly lower cost.”
In this circumstance, 3D printing is actually a better industrial manufacturing tool than the traditional tool-and-die process. As with anything in the world of manufacturing and engineering, one needs to find the right tool for the right job, and every shop and business need is different. Based on Markforged’s whitepaper, Centerline is able to save both time and money on creating, updating and repairing dies and punches.
Centerline creates new dies and punches seven times cheaper and eight times faster by 3D printing rather than traditional machining processes.
"I can now take a CAD drawing and print it out and say, ‘Here’s the fixture’ within half the time it took to make it in the previous methods,” Vickery told Markforged.
His company plays to one of the biggest strengths of 3D printing: flexibility. Making dies can be expensive and time-consuming. By leveraging additive processes to create custom tooling, Centerline was able to lower its tooling costs by 86 percent and improve lead times by 88 percent.
Markforged discussed how a sheet metal project was brought in by a Centerline customer. “[The customer] asked engineers to bend and form a custom sheet steel part. Because the customer only needed two parts made, [Vickery] and his team knew the tooling costs exceeded what the customer was willing to pay. Centerline would have to make a custom fixture to fabricate just these two parts, meaning that the cost per part was astronomical. [Vickery] and his team suggested a 3D printed fixture.”
Manufacturing Is About Time and Efficiency
Almost every business in manufacturing is looking for ways to save time and be more efficient. The cliche of “time is money” really does resonate through this industry. CNC operators are looking for ways to shave seconds off cycle times, shop managers are looking to find faster routes through a facility to lessen steps taken per part, and CEOs are looking for ways to buoy the bottom line.
3D printing has been known in the world of engineering because it saves time and money by keeping prototyping in-house. Even if an organization has a machine shop, taking time on those machines not only costs money to run but also an opportunity cost in parts that could be running. But the rub for manufacturers using 3D printing has always been on additive’s speed and precision. A print can take six hours for a part that would take minutes in a CNC mill.
However, there is a cross-section where the amount of time needed to print is less important when a faster process could be used to continue making parts, i.e., money. Outsourcing parts has often been the solution for manufacturers in these situations but using the right 3D printer and materials might just make all the difference. Shops like Centerline Engineered Solutions are lowering costs and improving lead times with additive, so maybe there really is a growing opportunity for 3D printers in the larger world of manufacturing.