HOW TO SCALE ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
FROM CONCEPT TO MASS PRODUCTION
When mass production took a nosedive due to COVID-19, the need for more cost-efficient approaches to manufacturing became really apparent. Additive Manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing has long been a promising trend due to the viability of low-volume production, material usage efficiency and design flexibility. However, it has now crossed the point of no return — from low-volume prototyping method for pet projects of enthusiasts it becomes a feasible approach to mass production.
The new generation of AM machines provide volumes suitable for mass production, not only for one-off prototyping. By automating the 3D printing workflows, the manufacturers can improve the workshop floor efficiency, but to truly maximize the AM profitability in production you need to pay attention to every process and technological innovation.
The new generation of AM machines provide volumes suitable for mass production, not only for one-off prototyping. By automating the 3D printing workflows, the manufacturers can improve the workshop floor efficiency, but to truly maximize the AM profitability in production you need to pay attention to every process and technological innovation.
Why AM is on the rise and the benefits it brings
How can heavy industry manufacturers secure contracts amidst the pandemic? By reducing the lead time significantly as compared to competitors, among other things. This is why the ability to 3D print various complex and large parts is so crucial, when compared with the need to wait while such details are produced elsewhere and shipped to your location. Otherwise, you can wait for a contractor to provide third-party equipment and tools needed to manufacture such parts in place.
The advances in metal 3D printing technology, coupled with the availability of more affordable printer models and new versions of slicing software make AM quite a viable option for industrial-grade production. What previously was the prerogative of innovative startups who were supposed to think out of the box, now becomes a way for the whole industry to improve the long-standing processes and manufacturing modes.
3D printing at a large scale is in use for quite some time now. However, it traditionally was an expensive process, needing highly-specialized expertise to design, configure and run AM operations. However, as additive manufacturing gains pace, 3D printers become more affordable and the numbers of available experts grow, manufacturers begin considering AM as a feasible alternative to casting, molding and milling.
The risk introduced into the global supply chain with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly showcased the necessity to implement AM instead of relying on parts purchases and timely delivery from across the globe. The decrease in demand can actually be able to nudge the companies in the right direction and be used as a pause before riding the storm.
Additive manufacturing also provides quite significant savings in terms of raw material usage. 3D printed parts can have internal cavities that were not achievable with standard manufacturing methods. This allows reducing the number of raw materials needed to produce a part, without compromising its structural integrity.
Let's demonstrate what the additive manufacturing workflow is and how to increase efficiency on each stage of metal processing.
The advances in metal 3D printing technology, coupled with the availability of more affordable printer models and new versions of slicing software make AM quite a viable option for industrial-grade production. What previously was the prerogative of innovative startups who were supposed to think out of the box, now becomes a way for the whole industry to improve the long-standing processes and manufacturing modes.
3D printing at a large scale is in use for quite some time now. However, it traditionally was an expensive process, needing highly-specialized expertise to design, configure and run AM operations. However, as additive manufacturing gains pace, 3D printers become more affordable and the numbers of available experts grow, manufacturers begin considering AM as a feasible alternative to casting, molding and milling.
The risk introduced into the global supply chain with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly showcased the necessity to implement AM instead of relying on parts purchases and timely delivery from across the globe. The decrease in demand can actually be able to nudge the companies in the right direction and be used as a pause before riding the storm.
Additive manufacturing also provides quite significant savings in terms of raw material usage. 3D printed parts can have internal cavities that were not achievable with standard manufacturing methods. This allows reducing the number of raw materials needed to produce a part, without compromising its structural integrity.
Let's demonstrate what the additive manufacturing workflow is and how to increase efficiency on each stage of metal processing.
The end of the huge minimum order volumes era
The 5 key stages of an additive manufacturing process are as follows:
- Design
- Pre-processing
- Printing
- Post-processing
- Quality Assurance
AM Design
Metal additive manufacturing design can go two ways: either 3D printing an already existing part or designing a new one from scratch. These ways have distinctively different challenges and improvement opportunities.
The goal of using an existing part design is to devise a production process that requires as few modifications to existing workflows, as possible. This will allow saving costs on process redesign and workforce requalification.
The main business value of this approach is the opportunity to reduce production time and costs, not improving the product performance. Selecting an existing part design as a basis for 3D printing allows reducing the time to value in metal additive manufacturing.
Quite the opposite, selecting a new part design forces the manufacturer to find the most feasible balance between the product function and the ease of its manufacturing. This allows modifying the product to improve its performance, which acts as a powerful driver of business value. Each of the metal additive manufacturing processes must comply with its own set of design rules, limiting the possible part geometry and enforcing the design of support parts during the 3D printing.
Generative design in 3D printing is the most popular approach to topology optimization, allowing to optimize the AM process using innovative tools. Elise is an open software platform for generative engineering, which comes with a variety of well-established tools for simulation and modeling. It allows modeling the algorithmic workflow sequences via a visual DNA editor without writing a line of code and provides real-time CAD feedback. Thus, Elise helps reduce development costs and time by providing simple design evaluation and exploration variants.
AM Pre-Processing
The pre-processing begins with converting the 3D CAD file into sequences of instructions and a tool path a 3D printer uses when creating each layer of the part. These process parameters are essential, as they directly influence the quality of the metal printed and the accuracy of the resulting part. However, AM is a complex iterative process, so the parameters defined during the prototyping are hard to maintain in production.
To achieve this, in mass-production the 3D printer operation must perform iterative calibration of the printing with managed real-time process control loops.
3D Printing
This can be the most time-consuming part of the process, as it might take up to several days, based on the part size and printing technology used. However, this process is actually the one requiring the least human attention, as the next-generation 3D printers are able to run day in - day out with little need for supervision. However, some still require periodic heat release procedures to ensure stress relief, thus adding to the manufacturing costs and time. Nevertheless, once the printing process is calibrated, this time can be spent on other tasks, increasing the overall manufacturing productivity.
AM Post-Processing
This stage might actually take more time and add more costs than the printing itself. 3D printed parts require manual or automated finishing, usually for additive manufacturing. The operations involved vary based on the 3D printing equipment and manufacturing processes used. The post-processing steps are needed to ensure the part size accuracy, tensile strength, surface roughness, etc. Thus, it is another manufacturing stage where iterative testing and calibration are needed.
Additive manufacturing is not finished once the part is printed. To maximize the throughput, you need to also automate all post-processing aspects like removing the build boxes, loading and unloading cure ovens, recycling the excess powder, inspecting the printed parts, etc. PostProcess Technologies is revolutionizing the additive manufacturing landscape by offering the world's first and only platform for post-processing operations in 3D printing, like support removal and automated finishing.
Quality Assurance
As with everything in additive manufacturing, quality assurance is not a one-time effort. Instead, it is a sequence of measurements, analyses, inspections, and documentation management that takes place throughout the workflow. QA for AM is unique in that regard, as unlike in conventional metal processing, the repeatability of the process cannot be taken for granted.
As we mentioned above, the parameters controlling the result of the printing should be iteratively calibrated, and many 3D printing aspects depend on variables one cannot easily control. Therefore, a robust and in-depth QA strategy must be in place and cover the hardware, software and materials.
Additive Assurance is a product enabling quality assurance and process monitoring in additive manufacturing. Due to specializing in metal powder bed fusion (SLS, DLMS, SLM and others), the on-site analysis tools help detect any variations in your AM builds before they lead to a fault, so your personnel can take control over the printing process and adjust the parameters.
Metal additive manufacturing design can go two ways: either 3D printing an already existing part or designing a new one from scratch. These ways have distinctively different challenges and improvement opportunities.
The goal of using an existing part design is to devise a production process that requires as few modifications to existing workflows, as possible. This will allow saving costs on process redesign and workforce requalification.
The main business value of this approach is the opportunity to reduce production time and costs, not improving the product performance. Selecting an existing part design as a basis for 3D printing allows reducing the time to value in metal additive manufacturing.
Quite the opposite, selecting a new part design forces the manufacturer to find the most feasible balance between the product function and the ease of its manufacturing. This allows modifying the product to improve its performance, which acts as a powerful driver of business value. Each of the metal additive manufacturing processes must comply with its own set of design rules, limiting the possible part geometry and enforcing the design of support parts during the 3D printing.
Generative design in 3D printing is the most popular approach to topology optimization, allowing to optimize the AM process using innovative tools. Elise is an open software platform for generative engineering, which comes with a variety of well-established tools for simulation and modeling. It allows modeling the algorithmic workflow sequences via a visual DNA editor without writing a line of code and provides real-time CAD feedback. Thus, Elise helps reduce development costs and time by providing simple design evaluation and exploration variants.
AM Pre-Processing
The pre-processing begins with converting the 3D CAD file into sequences of instructions and a tool path a 3D printer uses when creating each layer of the part. These process parameters are essential, as they directly influence the quality of the metal printed and the accuracy of the resulting part. However, AM is a complex iterative process, so the parameters defined during the prototyping are hard to maintain in production.
To achieve this, in mass-production the 3D printer operation must perform iterative calibration of the printing with managed real-time process control loops.
3D Printing
This can be the most time-consuming part of the process, as it might take up to several days, based on the part size and printing technology used. However, this process is actually the one requiring the least human attention, as the next-generation 3D printers are able to run day in - day out with little need for supervision. However, some still require periodic heat release procedures to ensure stress relief, thus adding to the manufacturing costs and time. Nevertheless, once the printing process is calibrated, this time can be spent on other tasks, increasing the overall manufacturing productivity.
AM Post-Processing
This stage might actually take more time and add more costs than the printing itself. 3D printed parts require manual or automated finishing, usually for additive manufacturing. The operations involved vary based on the 3D printing equipment and manufacturing processes used. The post-processing steps are needed to ensure the part size accuracy, tensile strength, surface roughness, etc. Thus, it is another manufacturing stage where iterative testing and calibration are needed.
Additive manufacturing is not finished once the part is printed. To maximize the throughput, you need to also automate all post-processing aspects like removing the build boxes, loading and unloading cure ovens, recycling the excess powder, inspecting the printed parts, etc. PostProcess Technologies is revolutionizing the additive manufacturing landscape by offering the world's first and only platform for post-processing operations in 3D printing, like support removal and automated finishing.
Quality Assurance
As with everything in additive manufacturing, quality assurance is not a one-time effort. Instead, it is a sequence of measurements, analyses, inspections, and documentation management that takes place throughout the workflow. QA for AM is unique in that regard, as unlike in conventional metal processing, the repeatability of the process cannot be taken for granted.
As we mentioned above, the parameters controlling the result of the printing should be iteratively calibrated, and many 3D printing aspects depend on variables one cannot easily control. Therefore, a robust and in-depth QA strategy must be in place and cover the hardware, software and materials.
Additive Assurance is a product enabling quality assurance and process monitoring in additive manufacturing. Due to specializing in metal powder bed fusion (SLS, DLMS, SLM and others), the on-site analysis tools help detect any variations in your AM builds before they lead to a fault, so your personnel can take control over the printing process and adjust the parameters.
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Key emerging possibilities that enable full-scale AM adoption in production
Below we list the key possibilities to keep an eye for while implementing AM in production.
Digital infrastructure
The correct digital infrastructure is the main prerequisite for effective 3D printing implementation in production. Many companies prefer building their infrastructure using off-the-shelf IT solutions. However, most of these products were built with traditional manufacturing requirements in mind and can rarely be optimized to meet the 3D printing needs.
AM industry overcomes this issue by developing SaaS products for workflow management specifically suited to the needs of 3D printing processes. These platforms consolidate the whole additive manufacturing workflow management process — from managing requests, analyzing printability and providing machine analytics to scheduling production cycles, post-processing operations and supply chain management.
Digital infrastructure
The correct digital infrastructure is the main prerequisite for effective 3D printing implementation in production. Many companies prefer building their infrastructure using off-the-shelf IT solutions. However, most of these products were built with traditional manufacturing requirements in mind and can rarely be optimized to meet the 3D printing needs.
AM industry overcomes this issue by developing SaaS products for workflow management specifically suited to the needs of 3D printing processes. These platforms consolidate the whole additive manufacturing workflow management process — from managing requests, analyzing printability and providing machine analytics to scheduling production cycles, post-processing operations and supply chain management.
The company receives a centralized system for production monitoring and planning, providing greater traceability of parts movement and project overview.
Twikit is a proprietary product allowing us to combine the Industry 4.0 processes with a customized user experience. This tool enables managing the on-demand manufacturing and personalization of products. The platform can easily integrate with legacy systems to enable end-to-end digital manufacturing environments that support CNC milling, laser cutting, 3D printing, etc.
Creating ecosystems and collaborating
Consolidation of AM value chain, from product concept ideation to production and post-processing has to be more consolidated to support AM processes of the industrial scale. As of now, the market is full of various platforms, so the companies aiming to adopt additive manufacturing have to invest in disparate tools and try to make them work together. This lack of simple integration results in multiple inefficiencies in the AM value chain.
It would have been much better if all those products were organized into an end-to-end comprehensive ecosystem, which would make adopting the technology much easier. There are several notable attempts from AM hardware and software vendors to collaborate and make their products compatible. They do it to build an integrated platform providing great business value by improving the efficiency of 3D printing workflows and overall user experience.
An alternative way to consolidate the additive manufacturing ecosystem is to do business under the MaaS (Manufacturing-as-a-Service) model. MaaS helps companies in need of fast and cost-efficient manufacturing to partner with businesses that possess the required manufacturing capacities. This helps streamline supply chains across the board and provides multiple benefits to both parties by enabling demand/capacity balancing in 3D printing. AMable Services Arena is a great example of a MaaS product, offering the full range of AM modules. From design to finishing stages, your ideas can be implemented in new products following detailed guides.
Predictable 3D Printing
We mentioned several times the fact that additive manufacturing has to constantly deal with slight changes in process parameters, which can lead to costly mistakes. Previously, 3D engineers had to iteratively adjust various parameters to find the best combination and build the parts meeting the quality requirements. This incurred additional costs and hindered the AM adoption at scale.
Thus, to ensure reliability and repeatability of additive manufacturing, multiple software vendors develop simulation software. It allows moving the 3D printing process from one-time prototypes and small lots of details to reliable mass-production of parts. 3D modeling and simulation software provides the engineers with the necessary tools to assess the behavior of 3D printed parts under various stresses and build conditions. This reduces the time and costs of the trial-and-error period almost to zero, allowing us to reach the perfect fit from the first printing.
New materials
As the properties of the 3D printed parts largely depend on the materials used in their manufacturing, the real innovation in AM lies within expanding the range of achievable properties. Thus, the development of new materials for 3D printing is gaining speed, as chemical and material manufacturers concentrate their efforts on introducing new raw materials for additive manufacturing.
With the ever-increasing range of materials available for biotech, medical and electronic applications, new 3D printing technologies must be introduced to support moving these materials from the labs into mass-production. However, all of these materials can be defined as:
Thus, the acceleration of aluminum alloy material development for 3D printing is self-explanatory. More and more aluminum producers and suppliers enter the AM market to meet the demand. As a result, 3D printing engineers receive the freedom to design the parts that were previously obtainable only through retractive metal processing, while also heavily adapting these 3D printed parts to specific needs of innovative use cases.
Twikit is a proprietary product allowing us to combine the Industry 4.0 processes with a customized user experience. This tool enables managing the on-demand manufacturing and personalization of products. The platform can easily integrate with legacy systems to enable end-to-end digital manufacturing environments that support CNC milling, laser cutting, 3D printing, etc.
Creating ecosystems and collaborating
Consolidation of AM value chain, from product concept ideation to production and post-processing has to be more consolidated to support AM processes of the industrial scale. As of now, the market is full of various platforms, so the companies aiming to adopt additive manufacturing have to invest in disparate tools and try to make them work together. This lack of simple integration results in multiple inefficiencies in the AM value chain.
It would have been much better if all those products were organized into an end-to-end comprehensive ecosystem, which would make adopting the technology much easier. There are several notable attempts from AM hardware and software vendors to collaborate and make their products compatible. They do it to build an integrated platform providing great business value by improving the efficiency of 3D printing workflows and overall user experience.
An alternative way to consolidate the additive manufacturing ecosystem is to do business under the MaaS (Manufacturing-as-a-Service) model. MaaS helps companies in need of fast and cost-efficient manufacturing to partner with businesses that possess the required manufacturing capacities. This helps streamline supply chains across the board and provides multiple benefits to both parties by enabling demand/capacity balancing in 3D printing. AMable Services Arena is a great example of a MaaS product, offering the full range of AM modules. From design to finishing stages, your ideas can be implemented in new products following detailed guides.
Predictable 3D Printing
We mentioned several times the fact that additive manufacturing has to constantly deal with slight changes in process parameters, which can lead to costly mistakes. Previously, 3D engineers had to iteratively adjust various parameters to find the best combination and build the parts meeting the quality requirements. This incurred additional costs and hindered the AM adoption at scale.
Thus, to ensure reliability and repeatability of additive manufacturing, multiple software vendors develop simulation software. It allows moving the 3D printing process from one-time prototypes and small lots of details to reliable mass-production of parts. 3D modeling and simulation software provides the engineers with the necessary tools to assess the behavior of 3D printed parts under various stresses and build conditions. This reduces the time and costs of the trial-and-error period almost to zero, allowing us to reach the perfect fit from the first printing.
New materials
As the properties of the 3D printed parts largely depend on the materials used in their manufacturing, the real innovation in AM lies within expanding the range of achievable properties. Thus, the development of new materials for 3D printing is gaining speed, as chemical and material manufacturers concentrate their efforts on introducing new raw materials for additive manufacturing.
With the ever-increasing range of materials available for biotech, medical and electronic applications, new 3D printing technologies must be introduced to support moving these materials from the labs into mass-production. However, all of these materials can be defined as:
- polymers,
- ceramic composites
- nanoparticle ink suspensions.
Thus, the acceleration of aluminum alloy material development for 3D printing is self-explanatory. More and more aluminum producers and suppliers enter the AM market to meet the demand. As a result, 3D printing engineers receive the freedom to design the parts that were previously obtainable only through retractive metal processing, while also heavily adapting these 3D printed parts to specific needs of innovative use cases.
Conclusions
With the ever-expanding range of AM applications and processes, as well as the influx of advanced raw materials, the drive towards Industry 4.0 gains pace. 3D printing dramatically shortens the design and development cycles for new products, enabling their manufacturing at scale. If you want your business to remain competitive within these advanced industries, implementing an AM management system is the best way to design new products cost-efficiently and get them to market quickly.
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Europe Headquarters - Ukraine, Kharkiv
UA +38 050 298-1847
info@globalluxsoft.com
