I have been involved in many organisations implementing additive manufacturing (AM). No organisation is the same and the plan for each ends up being unique to the organisation, its customers, and their product line.
Generally, you can organise your plan using ‘different buckets’. One bucket being models, prototypes, marketing pieces, etc. Another being serial production, end components, and supplementing production for a variety of reasons including supply chain disruption and parts & services.
The third bucket is often overlooked by strategists and AM presenters alike and this is tooling. “Tooling” can include a variety of applications such as injection moulds, casting moulds and its pieces, jigs, fixtures, lift mechanisms, assembly aids, and productivity/safety enablers. I find it baffling that many corporations trying to implement Industry 4.0 ignore the AM side of this implementation. To be sure, many people ignore this application for a variety of reasons, one being that the old way was workable and the other being that this application isn't very sexy.
3D printed tooling
In my previous company, I didn't ignore this application and worked hard to bring this into many factories worldwide with success. When there was opposition from operations, I was successful in the end, not by my own combination of planning, reasoning, and personality, but because of my discovery that many of the parts in the factory were already 3D printed either by young manufacturing professionals at their plant or by suppliers.
Many suppliers have already determined that 3D printing is the most efficient way to make these parts and the most profitable. One of my colleagues in the automotive industry, Tom Sorovetz, discovered after an audit that suppliers were indeed doing a significant percent of their parts in AM for operations, saving money but not passing those savings onto their customers. The cost of tooling is a key factor in choosing which part is a best fit for additive. Having said that, we created some impressive long fibre tooling using a midrange Markforged machine, which was significantly better than the aluminium tooling. We also created a great deal of tooling from lower cost desktop machines such as Prusa and Formlabs.
Industry 4.0 has listed one of its components as additive manufacturing. AM is digital as its core. Replacing worn or broken tooling by picking a button is a huge benefit in operations. Increasingly, ergonomic tooling is making its way into factories, improving productivity and reducing fatigue of its workers. Changing parameters quickly in CAD based upon an individual's metrics in minutes, and printing the parts in hours, makes plants more efficient. An additional benefit that I have seen is the empowerment of assembly technicians when they found this ability to make their own changes, contributions, and test them.
Get your FREE print subscription to TCT Magazine.
Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Using 3D printing to make parts for factory operations is proven and much easier to meet requirements than serial production. I am making this point the hard way but if you are looking to get into AM, there is no better way than to start with tooling. You can do it using the cheaper 3D printing machines out in the market and can immediately save ten of thousands of dollars.
Kevin Ayers is an additive manufacturing specialist and consultant at 3D Metal Konsulting, and an Event Advisor for RAPID +TCT.
