3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, has long been touted as the next Industrial Revolution. While this may still be some years away, find out more about how the technology today can impact your business.

Traditional Manufacturing Techniques

Before additive manufacturing, parts were commonly produced through subtractive manufacturing where simple designs were cut from materials and assembled together subsequently into a single unit. Over the years as design tools such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) for engineers improved vastly, the limitations of existing manufacturing methods were exposed.

There have been many cases in which design improvements could be added to improve efficiency, safety or functionality but failed to be implemented as it was impossible to manufacture. As a result, product engineers had to restrict their product designs strictly to the limitations of manufacturing techniques.

The Game Changer: 3D Printing

By creating objects layer by layer, 3D printing allows parts once assumed impossible to be produced. This allows engineers to leverage on the full potential of CAD and other design tools to create designs limited by their imagination. Additive manufactured part also reduces part count in the overall production process, increasing efficiency significantly by replacing complex assemblies with single parts which can be made much lighter and with minimal wastage.

Today, we are free to imagine how we want our products to be designed without being held down by the constraints of manufacturing technology.

Visit our website http://www.prototype-in-asia.com/ today and reimagine the possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Guillermo Mart´ınez de Frutos, Product Development Process for Additive Manufacturing, 2015