Technology aiding manufacturing has evolved over the years. One of the advancements in this field is additive manufacturing. While it may still be evolving, manufacturers can take advantage of particular use cases to cut costs and reduce timeline. Of course, there’re direct benefits to the manufactures and customers alike.
About additive manufacturing
In simple terms, additive manufacturing is about building something one layer at a time. In core technical terms, it may seem like any process where a product is created by building something up, like molding, but actually it refers to 3D printing.
Manufacturing something additively allows creating objects with functionally-grade materials. It also means that the object can have different materials on the inside and outside. Additive manufacturing is transforming the manufacturing world greatly. Suppose, if there’s a need to make an object with high conductivity and good abrasion resistance, it can be easily done using additive manufacturing. In that case, the object can have abrasion resistant materials like ceramics on the outside and conductive materials like a metal on the inside. Conventional manufacturing makes it difficult to create something like that.
Additive manufacturing has great advantages that were extremely difficult to achieve with conventional manufacturing:
- Producing objects with complex geometries
- Manufacturing in small lot sizes
A manufacturer can use additive manufacturing to produce layer by layer, almost any shape or size of an object to create. They can create 3D entities which are highly complex and can have different material properties. It also means manufacturers can keep the weight of the object in check and reduce it significantly. It holds immense importance in aerospace and automobile industries, where can be really sensitive element and can impact the functionality of the final product.
This manufacturing methodology is cost-effective because setup costs are negligible so creating just a few objects becomes reasonable. This is why additive manufacturing has helped customizing products like prosthetics, implants easier. It has ultimately helped consumers or patients, offering them better products at cost-effective rates. Hearing aids, which are customized for each user these days, are almost entirely made using additive manufacturing/3D printing services.
In order to create an object, a design is created first using computer aided design (CAD) or software, or by taking scan of an object to be created. Software translates the object into a layer by layer framework for the additive manufacturing machine to follow. It is sent to 3D printer for final creation.