Almost ten years, as a junior on this very magazine, I got on the phone to several additive manufacturing (AM) service providers to find out if video was in fact killing the radio star. The theory, fresh off the back of a wave of consumer hype, was that customers would bypass established model makers and prototyping houses in favour of simply printing stuff at home with their own low-cost desktop printers.
That, of course, never happened. In fact, in some cases, as Matt White, Business Development and Sales Manager at Ogle Models & Prototypes tells us, it went the other way.
“There's a couple of examples of people that have had [AM] in house and decided to close it down and outsource based on costs and various other reasons,” White shared. It paints a broad picture of the challenges companies face when deciding to invest in AM. The first question you might ask when starting that journey is: which machine should I buy? The right question, White offers, should really be: is AM suitable for my application?
“If it isn't right, we'll always advise,” White explained, adding that the last thing this industry needs is more disgruntled users throwing in the towel when AM isn’t the plug and print experience the 2010s advertised. “That can be quite damaging to the industry and the customer doesn't get the most cost effective or best results they can get. That applies to one-off aesthetic models or functional prototypes all the way to volume manufacture."
Application discovery is key but finding the business case for AM is multi-layered, and piece cost isn’t always the most accurate metric when comparing with traditional processes – rarely is it the most favourable towards AM. Value comes in various shapes and sizes, as White explained.
“Utilising AM and optimising design can unlock cost savings on the assembly line. For example, multiple parts can be merged together to save on assembly costs. Parts could be more lightweight, so operational costs reduced over the lifetime of the product or have improved serviceability. Even if the AM part is slightly more costly, overall, it may not be!”
This year Ogle is celebrating its 70th anniversary. The UK-based model shop’s first customer was Bush Radio, which commissioned Ogle to design a transistor radio and a record player. When former Managing Director Len Martin saw the stereolithography process on Tomorrow’s World in the early 90s, Ogle made the decision to bring it in house and, within five years, AM transformed the business.
“It's the years of experience,” White said of Ogle’s near 30 years using industrial AM. “It does make a difference. Quite a lot of our customers think 3D printing is plastic filament extrusion. They visit us and they see these huge industrial style machines which cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and it's a different ballgame.”
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Oftentimes, it not a case of either or, and clients with their own kit in-house might rely on the capacity and flexibility of bureaus to take on certain production tasks.
“We're an extension of that company,” White said. “We could do bits that they find quite challenging because we’re used to working with tens of thousands of different parts and geometries.”
Service providers, with years of expertise and a diversity of technologies to tap into, can provide a good starting point for newcomers who haven’t yet built up their own AM knowledge or infrastructure. Jonathan Rowley, an AM consultant, and former service bureau leader, advocates for new users starting their AM journeys via service providers to build confidence and combat that all too common narrative of users buying an AM system, without the knowledge to fully leverage it, and becoming disillusioned.
“Using AM does not mean owning AM,” Rowley told TCT. “For most people, it will never mean owning AM. They just need to be encouraged to procure AM, the right stuff from the right people.”
3D printing bureaus are not just rows of machines. Those machines are run by people, and Rowley urges users to seek out those that are open to having a dialogue about their application rather than relying on automated ordering systems. Whether buying a machine or using a service, the needs of one customer requiring a prototype will be completely different to those of another ordering a run of 1,000 parts in a particular material, under certified conditions.
“If the right choice isn't made by the adopter in whatever context they're trying to use it, it's very unlikely that they're going to have a successful outcome,” Rowley said.
There's a strong argument for 'try before you buy.' Rowley ran successful selective laser sintering-based bureau Digits2Widgets for eight years and tells us, to his knowledge, that out of the thousands of clients he worked with, only one ever bought a machine. Often, customers would come in to see the process for themselves and quickly learn that amongst the powders, printers and post-processing systems, adopting AM requires more than plugging in a printer.
“Most of the people who are ever going to get involved with AM are already in it to some extent,” Rowley added. “But nobody, not even huge multinationals, should buy anything until you've tried it.”
Rowley is, however, a 3D printing optimist, believing that anyone who makes anything could use a little AM. But understanding how, and building relationships with the right people and providers is vital, which is why he recently set up the AM Manifest Companion as a guide to AM via real case studies. The more success stories AM has, based on those foundations, the greater adoption could be.
“That will only happen on the back of everybody coming on board with it and understanding it's value because that kind of faith and level of adoption stimulates the R&D that's needed to bring it forward,” Rowley concluded. “The success of this industry isn't based on machine sales. It's based on how many people are working, making things, and enjoying the value that it brings.”
