[P2P-F] Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?

Fri Jul 29 14:13:42 CEST 2011

 Topic: [tt] Will 3D printing revolutionise
manufacturing?<http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/t/81cc40dd0e70cb0b>
Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> Jul 28 11:16AM -0500
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From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
Date: Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:16 AM
Subject: [tt] Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14282091

Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?

Peter Day By Peter Day Presenter, In Business

3D Printer Loughborough University's machines can even print larger
structures such as building materials

With the creation of many products - including building materials - now
possible at the touch of a button, will 3D printing sound the death knell
for
mass production?

In a way there is nothing new about 3D printing.

For several decades it has been called "rapid prototyping": a quick way of
making one-off items from fused plastic or metal powder, using expensive
computer-controlled lasers that are at the heart of the "printers".

But now 3D printing is coming into its own, and is being taken seriously as
a
manufacturing process by very big corporations.

For 100 years, the manufacturing industry has been dominated by the idea of
mass production.

That was devised by Henry Ford in Detroit in the early 1900s to tackle a
severe shortage of skilled labour when he wanted to start making the
revolutionary Model T automobiles.

Ford's factories melted iron ore, stamped out car bodies, used
interchangeable parts to turn out millions of cars in, as the famous phrase
has it, "any colour so long as it's black".

“Start Quote Ian Risk, Innovation Works EADS

It's a new way of looking at manufacturing... We could change things
significantly, and save money”

Ian Risk Innovation Works, EADS

In pictures: 3D printing in action

The moving production line came to be the emblem of the new manufacturing
era, generating torrents of products and foods for a new mass market of
consumers.

But now 3D printing is beginning to change the mass production model that so
dominated the 20th century.

It is now called additive manufacturing, to distinguish it from
old-fashioned
subtractive manufacturing, that is the shaving away or moulding blocks of
raw
metal to make engineered components.

You might have laughed if 100 years ago In Business had come back from
Detroit convinced that Ford had successfully combined the idea of
interchangeable parts from the American small arms industry with the moving
line from the slaughterhouses of Chicago meat packers to create a
revolutionary system of mass production that would be adopted almost
everywhere else in business.

But what Henry Ford started was no joke, and nor is 3D printing today.

You get some sense of the potential from the pioneers at Loughborough
University.

'Cost effective'

Neil Hopkinson is senior lecturer in the Rapid Manufacturing Research Group.

His lab is full of impressive 3D printing machines, decked out with samples
of the work they are trying out.

3D printing plus crowd sourcing can make product design an accessible
reality

>From demonstrating trial components, it does not take long before he is
talking about the huge impact the process could have on the way businesses
work.

"It could make off-shore manufacturing half way round the world far less
cost
effective than doing it at home, if users can get the part they need printed
off just round the corner at a 3D print shop on the high street.

"Rather than stockpile spare parts and components in locations all over the
world," he argues, "the designs could be costlessly stored in virtual
computer warehouses waiting to be printed locally when required."

Just across the Loughborough campus at the Civil and Building Engineering
Department is Neil's colleague Richard Buswell, who shows me an
extraordinary
three-storey rig designed to "print" buildings.

It squirts concrete out of a nozzle controlled by a computer, using the
concrete just like a conventional printer would use ink, but in three
dimensions, building up a structure layer by layer.

The construction industry is rather conservative; many building sites still
look much as they did in Roman times. 3D Printer Loughborough University's
machines can even print larger structures such as building materials

If Richard and his colleagues can prove it works at Loughborough - and
convince potential users - additive manufacturing could change the industry.

One potentially big change, in construction as in other activities, is to
place designers right at the centre of activity.

"Rapid manufacturing is all about putting the power of making things back in
the hands of the architects," says Richard Buswell.

"Young architects currently training are the ones who will take the
techniques through into mainstream architecture."

The EADS aircraft plant near Bristol is already exploiting this technology,
and announced earlier this year that it had used additive layer
manufacturing
to produce a bike.

When I was there I saw machines turning out complex satellite parts which
are
lighter in weight and cheaper to make than conventionally-machined
components. 'Disruptive' potential

"It's new materials, it's new design processes, it's a new way of looking at
manufacturing," says Ian Risk, head of Innovation Works at EADS in the UK.

"We have had the processes of subtractive manufacturing built into our ways
of working, the way we think about components from the outset. We could
change things significantly, and save money."

But first entrenched companies will have to wake up to the potential of the
process.

That may be an uncomfortable experience for most business people, trained
and
practiced in the mass production way of doing things. Bench created through
3D printing 3D printing puts the designer at the centre of the process when
creating items like this bench

Engineer Will Sillar is a partner at the Legerwood management consultancy
which advises companies on 3D printing, something he believes has all sorts
of disruptive potential:

"Up to 50 percent of the working capital of a business is currently tied up
in stock and working capital," he says.

"Eliminate that, and the finance director is going to be the happiest man in
the world."

But introducing disruptive change is not an easy thing to do, warns Stuart
Jackson, UK manager of the German company EOS, a leading maker of 3D
manufacturing machines.

"If you've spent years in your career to establish a manufacturing process,
and then something comes along that could throw it out of the window, it's
not necessarily attractive.

"It needs to be an open mind to actually take it on board."

3D printing may have reached that vital threshold. Now it needs companies
and
people who are open-minded enough to turn upside down the traditional ways
of
making things and, eventually, of running businesses.

In Business is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 28 July at 2030 BST and Sunday 31
July at 2130 BST. You can also listen via the BBC iPlayer or the podcast.
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