Coming years are about efficient production activities in the industrial sector as 3d printing continues to grow. Over the past few decades, 3d printing has played a major role in transforming the industrial supply chain. Manufacturing a complex part or assembly would take multiple vendors who might be situated at various locations nationally or internationally contributing to a very long supply chain. On the other hand, metal 3D printing can produce such complex parts without having to reach out to multiple vendors.
Nowadays, as competition in growing, new products are being launched by giant companies faster than ever before to capture and maintain their market presence and market share, and therefore, product development and research departments are actively exploring innovative options to improve the product as well as process. Metal 3D printing has the capacity to enhance product quality and optimize process. Small batch production is possible with metal 3D printing where the parts can be tested, and design can be validated in a few weeks’ time which otherwise would take 3-6 months conventionally.
Depending on material, complexity and part quality, production of metal parts begin with designing of tools such as molds, dies, patterns, jigs & Fixtures etc. Designing and manufacturing of tooling itself is a cumbersome task which requires high skill, expensive infrastructure and time. In many cases, multiple iterations of tool design and manufacture are necessary to achieve final part dimensions. So, it is an expensive and time-consuming affair to develop a part and its production process. Metal 3D printing omits tool design and production activities, consequently, reduces supply chain significantly.
Tools like jigs, fixtures, and custom tube bender dies are no doubt speeding up the assembly lines but as far as the product development is concerned, rapid prototyping is far more efficient.
Image Courtesy: StratasysAlong with product development, spare parts industry can be benefited out of metal 3D printing. Our world is growing fast paced. As people are connecting to the world via the internet, customer products are easier to be communicated with the help of internet. That is the future 3D printing holds within. Warehouses and tooling inventory to hold the products will become a thing of the past. Product CAD designs can now be saved in a file, shared on the internet, and USB drives. The other-end consumer/manufacturer gets the prototype single-handedly. The manufacturers can then access these files, print it, and ship it back to the designer/consumer in .
In the future, 3D printing technology will be supporting the supply chain and boost everyday manufacturing productivity up to a greater extent. We, at 3D Incredible, keep up with growing requirements of the industrial world hence; we constantly upgrade our skills and the way of approach to deliver only the best to the world.
