“Life is like a box of chocolates…”, Forrest Gump famously said. However, Additive Manufacturing can often feel more like “a box of jigsaw pieces”.
Those of us invested in AM can see the overall picture on the lid of the box (an analogy for knowing what it’s capable of), but sometimes even we really don’t know if all of the pieces are present to complete it.
It’s only sometimes when you get to that tricky section, where it’s difficult to find just the right piece, that you realise that perhaps it’s not in the box at all.
Incomplete jigsaws are very frustrating and unsatisfactory, especially when you’ve put so much time into them. So, what can you do when you recognise that you’re missing a piece of the AM jigsaw?
One option is that you wait for it to be recognised by another part of the ecosystem before you can carry on. An example of this is the need for those using 3D printing in the Food & Beverage industry where they need production line equipment produced using bright blue, metal-detectable materials. This material allows any breakaway from those parts to be detected by vision and X-ray systems to ensure they don’t leave the factory in the food chain.
As part of my work I was often asked if it was possible to 3D print this material, the answer to which was “sorry, but no”. It wasn’t that the material didn’t exist, it just didn’t exist in a form that suited AM methods. Then suddenly a material supplier in the sector recognised that need and released blue PA metal-detectable material in filament form and it’s pleasing to see it’s availability has now also expanded into powder form for use in SLS systems.
So, a piece of the jigsaw was found and completing the picture on the box continued.
An alternative is to accept that you may need to create the missing piece yourself. Indeed, initially with the example above, I obtained that material in pellet form and tried (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to get it extruded into filament form. Sometimes, if you can’t wait for someone else to create the solution, the only way might involve taking the DIY route.
TCT Team
There’s a third way to find the missing pieces though, and that’s to talk to your peers using AM in the same sector, or even those working with it in other sectors. Maybe they’ve seen the missing piece, know where it can be found, or have managed to create the piece themselves.
That’s where the new AdditiveIQ event taking place next year fits in. Building on the success of three years of the TCT User Group, this event will facilitate those conversations that might unlock the jigsaw puzzle for you by finding the missing piece via face-to-face discussions and comparing notes with other AM users
So join us next June at AdditiveIQ and maybe it will help you find that piece that you are missing from your own AM jigsaw puzzle.
TCT Team
