Applications of 3D printing
In recent years, 3D printing has developed significantly and can now perform crucial roles in many applications, with the most common applications being manufacturing, medicine, architecture, custom art and design, and can vary from fully functional to purely aesthetic applications.
3D printing processes are finally catching up to their full potential, and are currently being used in manufacturing and medical industries, as well as by sociocultural sectors which facilitate 3D printing for commercial purposes. There has been a lot of hype in the last decade when referring to the possibilities we can achieve by adopting 3D printing as one of the main manufacturing technologies. Utilizing this technology would replace traditional methods that can be costly and time consuming. There have been case studies outlining how the customization abilities of 3D printing through modifiable files have been beneficial for cost and time effectiveness in a healthcare applications.
There are different types of 3D printing such as fused filament fabrication, stereolithography, selective laser sintering, polyjet printing, multi-jet fusion, direct metal laser sintering, and electron beam melting.
For a long time, the issue with 3D printing was that it has demanded very high entry costs, which does not allow profitable implementation to mass-manufacturers when compared to standard processes. However, recent market trends spotted have found that this is finally changing. As the market for 3D printing has shown some of the quickest growth within the manufacturing industry in recent years. The applications of 3D printing are vast due to the ability to print complex pieces with a use of a wide range of materials. Materials can range from plastic and polymers as thermoplastic filaments, to resins, and even stem cells.
Manufacturing applications
AM technologies found applications starting in the 1980s in product development, data visualization, rapid prototyping, and specialized manufacturing. Their expansion into production has been under development in the decades since. Industrial production roles within the metalworking industries achieved significant scale for the first time in the early 2010s. Since the start of the 21st century there has been a large growth in the sales of AM machines, and their price has dropped substantially. According to Wohlers Associates, a consultancy, the market for 3D printers and services was worth $2.2 billion worldwide in 2012, up 29% from 2011. McKinsey predicts that additive manufacturing could have an economic impact of $550 billion annually by 2025. There are many applications for AM technologies, including architecture, construction, industrial design, automotive, aerospace, military, engineering, dental and medical industries, biotech, fashion, footwear, jewelry, eyewear, education, geographic information systems, food, and many other fields.Additive manufacturing's earliest applications have been on the toolroom end of the manufacturing spectrum. For example, rapid prototyping was one of the earliest additive variants, and its mission was to reduce the lead time and cost of developing prototypes of new parts and devices, which was earlier only done with subtractive toolroom methods such as CNC milling and turning, and precision grinding, far more accurate than 3D printing with accuracy down to 0.00005" and creating better quality parts faster, but sometimes too expensive for low accuracy prototype parts. With technological advances in additive manufacturing, however, and the dissemination of those advances into the business world, additive methods are moving ever further into the production end of manufacturing in creative and sometimes unexpected ways. Parts that were formerly the sole province of subtractive methods can now in some cases be made more profitably via additive ones. In addition, new developments in RepRap technology allow the same device to perform both additive and subtractive manufacturing by swapping magnetic-mounted tool heads.
Cloud-based additive manufacturing
Additive manufacturing in combination with cloud computing technologies allows decentralized and geographically independent distributed production. Cloud-based additive manufacturing refers to a service-oriented networked manufacturing model in which service consumers are able to build parts through Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, Hardware-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service. Distributed manufacturing as such is carried out by some enterprises; there are also services like 3D Hubs that put people needing 3D printing in contact with owners of printers.Some companies offer online 3D printing services to both commercial and private customers, working from 3D designs uploaded to the company website. 3D-printed designs are either shipped to the customer or picked up from the service provider.
There are many open source websites that have downloadable STL files which are able to be modified or printed as is. Files ranging from functional tools to aesthetic figurines are available to the general public. Open source files can be beneficial for the user as the printed object can be more cost effective than commercial counterparts.
Mass customization
Companies have created services where consumers can customize objects using simplified web based customization software, and order the resulting items as 3D printed unique objects. This now allows consumers to create things like custom cases for their mobile phones or scans of their brains. Nokia has released the 3D designs for its case so that owners can customize their own case and have it 3D printed.Rapid manufacturing
Advances in RP technology have introduced materials that are appropriate for final manufacture, which has in turn introduced the possibility of directly manufacturing finished components. One advantage of 3D printing for rapid manufacturing lies in the relatively quick and inexpensive production of small numbers of parts.Rapid manufacturing is a new method of manufacturing and many of its processes remain unproven. 3D printing is now entering the field of rapid manufacturing and was identified as a "next level" technology by many experts in a 2009 report. One of the most promising processes looks to be the adaptation of selective laser sintering, or direct metal laser sintering some of the better-established rapid prototyping methods., however, these techniques were still very much in their infancy, with many obstacles to be overcome before RM could be considered a realistic manufacturing method.
There have been patent lawsuits concerning 3-D printing for manufacturing.
Rapid prototyping
Industrial 3D printers have existed since the early 1980s and have been used extensively for rapid prototyping and research purposes. These are generally larger machines that use proprietary powdered metals, casting media, plastics, paper or cartridges, and are used for rapid prototyping by universities and commercial companies.Research
3D printing can be particularly useful in research labs due to its ability to make specialized, bespoke geometries. In 2012 a proof of principle project at the University of Glasgow, UK, showed that it is possible to use 3D printing techniques to assist in the production of chemical compounds. They first printed chemical reaction vessels, then used the printer to deposit reactants into them. They have produced new compounds to verify the validity of the process, but have not pursued anything with a particular application.Usually, the FDM process is used to print hollow reaction vessels or microreactors. If the 3D print is performed within an inert gas atmosphere, the reaction vessels can be filled with highly reactive substances during the print. The 3D printed objects are air- and watertight for several weeks. By the print of reaction vessels in the geometry of common cuvettes or measurement tubes, routine analytical measurements such as UV/VIS-, IR- and NMR-spectroscopy can be performed directly in the 3D printed vessel.
In addition, 3D printing has been used in research labs as alternative method to manufacture components for use in experiments, such as magnetic shielding and vacuum components with demonstrated performance comparable to traditionally produced parts.