U.S. President Biden has announced a major new 3D printing initiative, AM Forward, for advancing additive manufacturing (AM) across small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a voluntary pact between large manufacturers and SMEs, the program looks to leverage AM technologies for revitalizing U.S. manufacturing, in turn strengthening brittle supply chains.
Smaller manufacturers often lack resources for embracing AM’s workflows, costing, training, materials and design processes. The U.S. Administration plans to invest in regional manufacturing ecosystems to help overcome challenges that have previously hindered widespread 3D printing adoption. Federal programs will be introduced to increase the competitiveness of SMEs through access to capital, technical assistance and workforce training. For example, America Makes will assist in the upskilling of AM Forward participants, and will reportedly launch AM apprenticeship programs in association with the U.S. Department of Labor. AM Forward will be backed by the Applied Science & Technology Research Organization (ASTRO), a non-profit organization.
Through AM Forward, larger companies will commit to ordering AM parts from these smaller suppliers—as a result, boosting demand for regional AM activity. These leading manufacturers will further support SME adoption of additive capabilities by offering training, providing technical assistance, and engaging in standards development. Initial participants in the program include industry giants like GE Aviation, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Siemens Energy.
Biden is also calling on Congress to pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which supports new technologies like 3D printing, invests in domestic manufacturing hubs, and increases funding for Manufacturing USA Institutes and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
Understandably, the AM industry is reacting to the news with excitement.
“The AM Forward program is further validation of the urgent need to rebuild agile manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. We’re at an undeniable inflection point—bringing digital manufacturing to U.S. businesses will be a critical component to the success of the American economy both now and into the future,” said Ellen Kullman, CEO of Carbon. “The administration’s acknowledgment of 3D printing to boost the economy is a solid step forward and a proof point that digital manufacturing is critical in addressing our ongoing supply chain challenges and beyond.”
Desktop Metal is another industrial 3D printer manufacturer with praise for AM Forward. “Additive manufacturing has long held the potential to de-risk supply chains and enable new innovations,” said Ric Fulop, CEO of Desktop Metal, in a press release. “With manufacturing reshoring already accelerating as a result of the historic supply chain disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the AM Forward initiative is a timely and progressive approach to modernizing our nation’s outdated manufacturing infrastructure with cutting-edge technologies that will help ensure that the work stays here for the long-term.”
Engineering.com also caught up with Phil DeSimone, co-founder of Carbon, for his insights.
Engineering.com: What are your thoughts on AM Forward?
Phil DeSimone: What we discovered across the last couple years—in particular through a pandemic, as well as through the global supply chain challenges—is that additive can bring an important piece to the puzzle to get around that. We discussed our work in the early days and what we were able to do to help with masks and printing swabs when there were those massive shortages. As we’re starting to see now in the global supply chain side of things, when manufacturing is beholden to singular locations in the globe and something goes wrong in those locations, to keep our economy going and our lives functioning becomes really difficult.
I think you’re going to start to see a refocus towards local for local manufacturing, geolocation for geolocation manufacturing, and moving away from globalization. I don’t think it will die, but essentially, the idea would be that you can do this anywhere and create factories extremely quickly, and help prevent something like this from happening in the future.
What does AM Forward mean for the economy and consumers?
For the economy, I think it will ultimately create more jobs and factories in domestic locations. When I think about particularly what this means for the United States, I think you’re going to see a lot more emphasis on buying from North America, which will help appreciate jobs here. For consumers, it means that they won’t have the same impacts on supply shortages. The ability of getting things faster will be key. Massive supply and demand issues that are increasing car prices, et cetera, should decline or at least have more protection against them. Hopefully, I think this is a win-win for everybody.
What are the anticipated next steps and outcomes?
While there’s an aspect of it which is exciting, supply chains are very complicated. I think this is a great first step in that direction, but I would say it’s still going to be a long journey to realize, essentially, the benefits of it. Additive manufacturing suppliers can provide print machines that make certain components, but they don’t make fully assembled products. And so, I would say there’s still a lot of room left to understand what it takes for the remainder of the supply chain to get together and construct micro-factories that are producing the same quality of components at scale.
Although it’s a good first step, I think this is one of those things that’s a multi-year journey. It’s not going to happen overnight. And so, we have to have a good understanding of the high-value components that make sense to do today, but also a really good understanding of the overarching supply chain and how we get there.
Apart from the supply chain angle, what does the transformation of processes to additive entail?
It really depends on the market and the readiness for adoption. There’s certain markets that I would say are here to be disrupted by additive now. Those particularly in the medical space, as well as oral health, where mass customization is prevalent, and there’s no other way to do it than using additive equipment.
I would say that in the industrial segments—in the automotive segments, aerospace, et cetera—a lot of it still comes with validation of the materials. 3D printers use materials that aren’t better or worse than traditional materials. They’re just different, and understanding how they perform is super-key.
When you think about the adoption cycles and what it could mean, essentially it’s about building confidence. Manufacturers are used to the traditional manufacturing methods. They’ve been using them for dozens of years, and they’re not yet used to the capabilities and understanding of 3D printers fully. It’s really our duty as additive manufacturing providers to be those evangelists and educators to these OEMs for how to take advantage of the technology. I truly believe that the equipment and materials that we’re providing today are good enough to create massive change immediately. But comfort is key. Familiarity is key. And although we’ve been around for quite some time, we still have not been around as long as injection molding or milling. So, it’s our duty as providers of additive manufacturing equipment to be the truth-bearers, to help people understand when and how to take advantage of the technology. And that takes time.
We are making good progress, but I believe it is a lifetime of work to get to do this. It’s going to take a team-based effort in order to truly see adoption happen to the point where it’s very well understood and people are making progress on their own without being handheld by experts.
What challenges will AM Forward have to overcome on this journey?
I think the big one is actually that overarching manufacturing supply chain. It’s one thing to make a part, a singular component. But if you’re still assembling the entire product overseas, it doesn’t buy you anything. For me, one aspect is taking the step for additive manufacturing to make those components. If we’re still making those parts here and shipping them overseas to be assembled into their final product, it’s not going to get the same impact that I think they’re hoping to get. So, we would look at the entire product development stream from idea to manufacturing of the full end-use assembly. I think this is a great first step, but if we don’t look at where things are being assembled into final products, it will come up short.
Could you touch on the skills gap, and the role that universities have in educating the next generation of product developers?
One of the aspects—particularly when it comes to additive—is if you go, even at the design schools at Stanford and other places like that, those courses are structured about all the things that you can’t do. The purpose for that is they’re trying to create boundary conditions for you to think creatively within, to get to your product. Additive really takes a different approach, which is, instead of thinking about the things that you can’t do, because complexity is free, you need to start thinking really about: how do I make the best product possible? When you start doing that, that’s when you truly start taking advantage of 3D printers.
If you’re designing a part that can be injection molded, you should just injection mold it. Injection molding’s very, very good. And so, I think there’s a skills gap in understanding how to design for additive effectively to take true advantage of it. And the same thing goes on polymers and metals, both alike. If you’re designing parts that can be milled with a metal, and you’re trying to run it through a metal 3D printer, that does not buy you a whole lot because milling is also very, very good and cost-effective. You really need to start thinking about it from how to make a better part, which requires us to make impacts and changes at the university level in how we educate the engineers of the future to take advantage of printers as a real manufacturing means.
It comes with providing them state-of-the-art software tools to take advantage of as well. Carbon’s been on the front end of this. We realized early on that we couldn’t just deliver materials and printers. We also had to deliver tools that people could use to design complicated parts. We have tens of thousands of struts in an Adidas shoe, as an example. If you were using traditional CAD means to design that, it would take you forever by hand. Creating simulation and AI-based computer generative design tools that are easy to use and don’t require a PhD in understanding, becomes super-important to address the skills gap that’s out there.