<div style="background-color: rgb(232, 238, 247); font-family: helvetica; font-size: 140%; border-top: 1px solid rgb(119, 153, 221); padding: 2px;"> Topic: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/t/81cc40dd0e70cb0b" target="_blank">[tt] Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?</a></div>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Bryan Bishop <<a href="mailto:kanzure@gmail.com" target="_blank">kanzure@gmail.com</a>></span>
Jul 28 11:16AM -0500
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---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>
From: Eugen Leitl <<a href="mailto:eugen@leitl.org" target="_blank">eugen@leitl.org</a>><br>
Date: Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:16 AM<br>
Subject: [tt] Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?<br>
To: <a href="mailto:tt@postbiota.org" target="_blank">tt@postbiota.org</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14282091" target="_blank">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14282091</a><br>
<br>
Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?<br>
<br>
Peter Day By Peter Day Presenter, In Business<br>
<br>
3D Printer Loughborough University's machines can even print larger<br>
structures such as building materials<br>
<br>
With the creation of many products - including building materials - now<br>
possible at the touch of a button, will 3D printing sound the death
knell<br>
for<br>
mass production?<br>
<br>
In a way there is nothing new about 3D printing.<br>
<br>
For several decades it has been called "rapid prototyping": a quick way
of<br>
making one-off items from fused plastic or metal powder, using expensive<br>
computer-controlled lasers that are at the heart of the "printers".<br>
<br>
But now 3D printing is coming into its own, and is being taken seriously
as<br>
a<br>
manufacturing process by very big corporations.<br>
<br>
For 100 years, the manufacturing industry has been dominated by the idea
of<br>
mass production.<br>
<br>
That was devised by Henry Ford in Detroit in the early 1900s to tackle a<br>
severe shortage of skilled labour when he wanted to start making the<br>
revolutionary Model T automobiles.<br>
<br>
Ford's factories melted iron ore, stamped out car bodies, used<br>
interchangeable parts to turn out millions of cars in, as the famous
phrase<br>
has it, "any colour so long as it's black".<br>
<br>
“Start Quote Ian Risk, Innovation Works EADS<br>
<br>
It's a new way of looking at manufacturing... We could change things<br>
significantly, and save money”<br>
<br>
Ian Risk Innovation Works, EADS<br>
<br>
In pictures: 3D printing in action<br>
<br>
The moving production line came to be the emblem of the new
manufacturing<br>
era, generating torrents of products and foods for a new mass market of<br>
consumers.<br>
<br>
But now 3D printing is beginning to change the mass production model
that so<br>
dominated the 20th century.<br>
<br>
It is now called additive manufacturing, to distinguish it from<br>
old-fashioned<br>
subtractive manufacturing, that is the shaving away or moulding blocks
of<br>
raw<br>
metal to make engineered components.<br>
<br>
You might have laughed if 100 years ago In Business had come back from<br>
Detroit convinced that Ford had successfully combined the idea of<br>
interchangeable parts from the American small arms industry with the
moving<br>
line from the slaughterhouses of Chicago meat packers to create a<br>
revolutionary system of mass production that would be adopted almost<br>
everywhere else in business.<br>
<br>
But what Henry Ford started was no joke, and nor is 3D printing today.<br>
<br>
You get some sense of the potential from the pioneers at Loughborough<br>
University.<br>
<br>
'Cost effective'<br>
<br>
Neil Hopkinson is senior lecturer in the Rapid Manufacturing Research
Group.<br>
<br>
His lab is full of impressive 3D printing machines, decked out with
samples<br>
of the work they are trying out.<br>
<br>
3D printing plus crowd sourcing can make product design an accessible<br>
reality<br>
<br>
>From demonstrating trial components, it does not take long before he is<br>
talking about the huge impact the process could have on the way
businesses<br>
work.<br>
<br>
"It could make off-shore manufacturing half way round the world far less<br>
cost<br>
effective than doing it at home, if users can get the part they need
printed<br>
off just round the corner at a 3D print shop on the high street.<br>
<br>
"Rather than stockpile spare parts and components in locations all over
the<br>
world," he argues, "the designs could be costlessly stored in virtual<br>
computer warehouses waiting to be printed locally when required."<br>
<br>
Just across the Loughborough campus at the Civil and Building
Engineering<br>
Department is Neil's colleague Richard Buswell, who shows me an<br>
extraordinary<br>
three-storey rig designed to "print" buildings.<br>
<br>
It squirts concrete out of a nozzle controlled by a computer, using the<br>
concrete just like a conventional printer would use ink, but in three<br>
dimensions, building up a structure layer by layer.<br>
<br>
The construction industry is rather conservative; many building sites
still<br>
look much as they did in Roman times. 3D Printer Loughborough
University's<br>
machines can even print larger structures such as building materials<br>
<br>
If Richard and his colleagues can prove it works at Loughborough - and<br>
convince potential users - additive manufacturing could change the
industry.<br>
<br>
One potentially big change, in construction as in other activities, is
to<br>
place designers right at the centre of activity.<br>
<br>
"Rapid manufacturing is all about putting the power of making things
back in<br>
the hands of the architects," says Richard Buswell.<br>
<br>
"Young architects currently training are the ones who will take the<br>
techniques through into mainstream architecture."<br>
<br>
The EADS aircraft plant near Bristol is already exploiting this
technology,<br>
and announced earlier this year that it had used additive layer<br>
manufacturing<br>
to produce a bike.<br>
<br>
When I was there I saw machines turning out complex satellite parts
which<br>
are<br>
lighter in weight and cheaper to make than conventionally-machined<br>
components. 'Disruptive' potential<br>
<br>
"It's new materials, it's new design processes, it's a new way of
looking at<br>
manufacturing," says Ian Risk, head of Innovation Works at EADS in the
UK.<br>
<br>
"We have had the processes of subtractive manufacturing built into our
ways<br>
of working, the way we think about components from the outset. We could<br>
change things significantly, and save money."<br>
<br>
But first entrenched companies will have to wake up to the potential of
the<br>
process.<br>
<br>
That may be an uncomfortable experience for most business people,
trained<br>
and<br>
practiced in the mass production way of doing things. Bench created
through<br>
3D printing 3D printing puts the designer at the centre of the process
when<br>
creating items like this bench<br>
<br>
Engineer Will Sillar is a partner at the Legerwood management
consultancy<br>
which advises companies on 3D printing, something he believes has all
sorts<br>
of disruptive potential:<br>
<br>
"Up to 50 percent of the working capital of a business is currently tied
up<br>
in stock and working capital," he says.<br>
<br>
"Eliminate that, and the finance director is going to be the happiest
man in<br>
the world."<br>
<br>
But introducing disruptive change is not an easy thing to do, warns
Stuart<br>
Jackson, UK manager of the German company EOS, a leading maker of 3D<br>
manufacturing machines.<br>
<br>
"If you've spent years in your career to establish a manufacturing
process,<br>
and then something comes along that could throw it out of the window,
it's<br>
not necessarily attractive.<br>
<br>
"It needs to be an open mind to actually take it on board."<br>
<br>
3D printing may have reached that vital threshold. Now it needs
companies<br>
and<br>
people who are open-minded enough to turn upside down the traditional
ways<br>
of<br>
making things and, eventually, of running businesses.<br>
<br>
In Business is on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 28 July at 2030 BST and Sunday
31<br>
July at 2130 BST. You can also listen via the BBC iPlayer or the
podcast.<br>
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