New Research On The Use Of 3D Printing In Advanced Manufacturing

3D Printing is hardly ever out of the news these days. Any search on Google News for the broad term “3D printing” will reveal dozens of new stories from today telling us that everything from cars to skulls and space station components to endangered birds’ eggs is now a “3D printing reality”.

We haven’t been silent on the subject. Back in 2013 we were predicting that 3D printing would gain mainstream adoption. In our article “3D Printing: Where’s it all heading?” we said:

“The future looks bright. All the industries we talked about in the previous post are likely to increase adoption of 3D printing technologies for their entire product development process, including exponential occurrences of production”.

So it was with great interest that we picked up this infographic from 3D printing technology supplier Stratasys earlier in the month.

The research set out to answer four key questions:

• How does your company use 3D printing?
• What is the landscape of 3D printing / additive manufacturing today?
• How has it changed over the past 30 years?
• How does your company plan on using 3D printing in the future?

The answers to the questions, while not surprising, do confirm a steady trend towards the universal adoption of 3D Printing technologies in industry.

The target audience for the research questionnaire consisted of 1295 individuals involved described as “advanced manufacturing professionals”.

This is also of direct interest to us here at Prototype Projects, because it was comprised almost entirely of the sorts of individuals that we work with day in day out – namely “engineers, designers, CEOs and buyers” from a range of technology heavy sectors including consumer, medical and energy.

Before going any further, we should just clarify that Stratasys is itself a manufacturer of advanced engineering products – namely a range of 3D printers in the Objet range of FDM, of which Prototype Projects has one of its own.

It serves their purpose to understand how widespread the adoption of 3D Printing ‘per se’ is in advanced manufacturing.

It serves ours to know how this affects – or is likely in the future to affect – specialist prototyping operations such as Prototype Projects, who offer a full range of 3D printing bureau services on an ‘outsourced’ basis to design consultancies and OEMs (manufacturers).

To that end, it was useful and interesting to see another of our most talked-about blog topics confirmed by this research, and one which we addressed very recently: the debate over the relative advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing 3D Printing.

While this survey does show that some organisations use a mix of in-house 3D printing and outsourced services, the survey’s headline that 94% of “manufacturing professionals outsource to a service provider” – while only 6% do all their 3D Printing in-house – aligns with our own sense of where the market is.

Clearly the survey shows only high level data, so we don’t know which 3D printing services are most commonly undertaken in-house, nor does it reveal the size or the organisations that have invested in in-house technologies. We can only assume that it is likely to be the very largest of advanced manufacturers (for instance those operating in aerospace or military/defence) that have the capabilities, desire and resources to invest in machines that may cost anything from £100,000 to £500,000 or more).

Of the 94% that said they do outsource to a specialist provider, 41% or respondents “said they ONLY use a service provider for their 3D printing needs”.

The next area of the survey addresses which 3D printing services these advanced manufacturing organisations prefer to outsource.

As you might expect, all the 3D printing technologies are covered – though first a clarification on some of the terminology:

• Photopolymerization = SLA (Stereolithography)
• Material Extrusion = FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling)
• Laser Sintering = SLS (Selective Laser Sintering)
• 3D metal printing = (SLS – but using metal powder instead of resin)

The most outsourced process (in line with our expectation) is photopolymerization or SLA – though this is very likely due to its position as the most popular and widely used of industrial 3D printing technologies.

The popularity or usage of other technologies from FDM through SLS are broadly as expected, though here at Prototype Projects we see more demand for SLS than for FDM.

The final layer of the infographic shows that most of the manufacturers questioned are using 3D printing for functional prototypes, jigs and fixture and concept models – again unsurprising, but a confirmation of the adoption of 3D printing for these purposes.

Something to keep an eye on for future research reports like this is the increasing integration of 3D printing into manufacturing – in other words the increasing adoption of “additive manufacturing”.

This is one of the most hyped up areas in 3D printing, and attracts headlines in the consumer media. It is fascinating to speculate on how additive manufacturing will evolve, but for now it seems that the one key factor holding it back is volume: how to mass-produce parts and components more cost effectively than they can be produced currently.

We look forward to finding out.

Got a 3D Printing requirement?

Contact Prototype Projects on 01763 249760 or click here to request a quote. Prototype Projects operates a dedicated 3D Printing facility with SLA Prototyping, SLS Prototyping, FDM Prototyping and DLP machines and a segregated Medical Material SLA 3D printer.