Technology, culture, commercial. Across the three brackets, additive manufacturing is faced with a plethora of challenges.
Some are more pressing than others, some more noticeable than others, and some are discussed more than others.
Design for AM, diversity and the cost of the technology are among those challenges that get highlighted time and again - all of which are valid and need to be addressed - but throughout the year, TCT has asked a select few industry experts and business leaders to shine a spotlight on the issues that are perhaps overlooked.
Here's what they said.
Dr. Brent Stucker, Chief Technology Officer – Additive Manufacturing, 3D Systems
We often talk about additive manufacturing being used for production applications, but those are largely low-volume runs. I think one of the areas we, as an industry, need to focus on more is how we can enable AM to deliver on mass production applications. We are already seeing some examples of this for healthcare solutions such as implants or personalised dental aligners. But for industrial and consumer goods, we typically find AM parts are produced for low-volume applications. I believe we have a real opportunity to develop and commercialise 3D printers and materials that are designed for true high-speed mass production of customised components to address this need.
Christina Perla, co-founder & CEO, Makelab
Customer experience & overselling. I have been spending time with our customers at Makelab and getting feedback on past experiences with other companies and the overall sentiment for the industry. What I'm learning is that the standards are pretty low, expectations weren't met (or set properly), and many were burned by the industry in some way. There's a general sense of optimism, but it's a little faint. Outsiders get the sense that once account managers and salespeople make the sale, the support after isn't there. They get the feeling that they only care about making that sale, that's it.
I think we can all do much better with this. It relates to longevity and churn. What's the point of bringing in all these customers and putting in the work to acquire them when we may have a churn and leaky bucket situation happening?
Andre Wegner, founder & CEO, Authentise
We are doing a little bit of talking about it, but application engineering is still the biggest challenge out there. You look at Carbon, for example, they spent [millions] trying to get applications developed for their machine and a large part of the metal space world is waiting on Boeing's new airframe to be released. We're just waiting on applications, and we're ploughing a lot of money into them, and we're not seeing those results. Where is the next dental aligner market? And I know it's a big, big answer, but I cannot spend enough time talking about that. This whole conference is filled with 'look at my printing machine and look at the fancy things that it can print.' But where's the kick-ass application that will lead to the next billion dollar growth? I don't see a lot of that conversation happening.
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Cora Leibig, founder & CEO, Chromatic 3D Materials
The drum I beat is the drum for material performance and versatility. I don’t think enough companies within the additive community understand the magnitude of this problem. Manufacturers who want to consider additive will often tell you that the main reason they aren’t using it is because of material performance. It’s not just a case of one material being stronger than another or having better elasticity — it’s about having the material palettes necessary to adapt to real application requirements, whether those are compression set, or low-temperature performance, or electrical performance. Building our additive systems around real material versatility is essential to meeting manufacturers' varied material-performance requirements.
Lisa Block, Chief Revenue Officer, Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies
I think the layoffs that have hit the tech industry has been discussed but not in a way that requires accountability. A lot of these companies within the additive manufacturing industry have laid off their staff to remedy some financial burden. Things happen, we all understand that. We all have been in environments where we have either seen or witnessed the unfortunate need to scale back our workforce. But what we do not often hear about is the elaborate lengths some of these CEOs and leadership teams exhausted to retain these employees initially.
If you go back to some of the people that are currently processing their inevitable career transitions, they will tell you that a good deal of them experienced a very distant layoff process. Some were laid off via email, some in groups and some with an employee that was previously classified as lateral to them. Either way, if we wish to foster dignified work environments, we need to employ methods that communicate equality in our treatment of our staff members in the entrance and exit processes.
Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, the people that are released are not the only ones privy to your layoff practices. The employees that stay witness it as well.
And though you have determined that their services are no longer needed, you must acknowledge that they contributed to the company while in your employ and deserve fair treatment even if a departure is necessary.
Chris Schuppe, General Manager Engineering and Technology, GE Additive
For me, I always go to culture. One of the responses [when you talk to customers about adopting binder jet, for example,] is 'that's not how we do it.' Most major corporations in the world have built really effective design and manufacturing processes around traditional manufacturing. So, when you go and say, I'm going to do additive, it disrupts that entire thought chain and culture. You have people whose jobs it is to go implement castings in a company like GE, now you're saying, 'I'm gonna make your part in additive.' Well, what do I do? I don't have a role. So, I think that cultural disruption is still very real. And it's hard to change momentum of big industry. That's what I talk about a lot with customers.
Rich Garrity, Chief Industrial Business Officer and President, Stratasys
I think it's fairly talked about, but we still have a level of scepticism that exists from people that have done things the way they've done them for so many years. And so the challenge is, how do you get those people to want to change the status quo and move out of their comfort zone and potentially take a risk when something that, in their eyes, is a process that's worked for many, many years. And so that, I think, is probably our biggest challenge.
It's not necessarily competitive landscape as much as this is the way we've done it for so many years and they have scepticism. And so that, I think, is still our biggest barrier. The good news is, as new people come into the workforce and we even see it with people we're hiring, there's so many more kids out of college that have hands-on experience with 3D printing, and that are totally gung-ho about it. As these people come into the workforce, that will change. But it will take time. That dynamic, I think, will get better over time.
Tim Wischeropp, Co-founder and CEO, amsight GmbH
I would probably say that quality assurance is the major topic. People don't talk too much, because they try to avoid talking about it, because it's a complex topic. A lot of people see the challenges, but they don't see the the opportunities. They have this specific process that is qualified, but don't see other opportunities, other technologies, that can also measure the quality more efficiently. And they say, 'okay, but it's not qualified.' But they are reluctant to put in the effort to qualify that to pay off in two, three years for that. And I think that is something the industry should talk more about, how to streamline quality insurance? Because it's, for regulated industries, one of the major cost drivers.
Blake Teipel, co-founder & CEO, Essentium
Procurement on the customer base. Too often, if you're working in a procurement group at a large enterprise - you make plane, train, car, computer, shoes, doesn't matter - your compensation and your annual bonus is measured based on how much money you saved on a per piece basis. And so you've got all these accountants and datasticians and procurement professionals, supply chain managers, and they're asking themselves, 'can I afford to take additive?' And they know that if they take additive they take a hit to their own bonus, because the per piece cost of additive is still higher than the per piece cost of classic technologies.
So, the procurement departments are not yet allowing their own organisations to realise the overall cost savings from digital inventory management, not having to over produce a moulding run and store 20% for service parts for 25 years. All these other cost savings are not captured. So, I think procurement, I don't think that's talked about.
Sona Dadhania, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx
A challenge that is often glossed over is the reduction of defects during printing to improve part reliability and production yield. This is essential for getting users in high value verticals with stringent safety or performance standards (i.e. aerospace, automotive, etc.) to trust additively manufactured parts for end-use applications beyond R&D and prototyping. Not only can this be improved on in the printer itself, but also through the integration of sensors, cameras, and software into the printer to correct defects in real-time.
Additionally, many established 3D printing companies and start-ups are developing pre-production and post-production software that can predict and account for defects pre-printing or use previous printing results to improve following printing batches. There is also the use of post-processing techniques to increase mechanical performance of a 3D-printed part. It will take a combination of these developments to make AM a highly reliable manufacturing technique for end-users.
SJ Jones, metal 3D printing engineer
The industry challenge that I see constantly overlooked is career progression in AM. What does that look like? How does it change from discipline to discipline? Will it be experience/skill based or degree/certificate based? As an AM professional myself, I struggle to map long-term career plans in an industry that's still so young. It's very akin to climbing a ladder and stepping out on each rung unable to see how many steps are left.
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
