Trends in 3D Manufacturing and Supply Chain Interaction

     Known as “additive manufacturing,” within industrial engineering circles, 3D printing uses information technology and communication to create anything designed from the virtual world and bring it to life. This can include a wide variety of applications, from chess pieces to complicated clocks. Prototypes are now created with increasing accuracy and speed. A new field has emerged out of these changing trends within 3D printing called “rapid prototyping.” Product design teams are using 3D modeling to help visualize their ideas and plans. This helps enhance the creative design process and workflow.

     Additionally, designers can touch and feel what their models will look like before implementing an expensive and time-consuming production process. We are able to use 3D printing to initiate more control over the materials process in a supply chain, specifically by incorporating different powder-based and plastic materials from printing nozzles.

     3D printing will eventually reach a point of saturation which will force a pricing spectrum. Some elements of this are already visible with companies like Mcor and Cube attempting to sell 3D products and printers for reasonable prices. The Makerbot printer at the Digital Media Center of Johns Hopkins University was actually built by a student for an engineering class. Below is a video of the Makerbot printing a whistle for our group:

     Another trend to solve the consumer accessibility barrier is through development of 3D printing centers, incubators, and hubs of innovative design. Companies like Autodesk and Google are creating desktop-accessible software platforms for this technology.

     In his most recent State of the Union speech in February, 2013, President Barack Obama stated that 3DP "has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything." (Source: CNN) Incubators such as NAMMI, or the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, are driving innovation and creating jobs in this sector. Based in Youngtown, OH, a town where unemployment ran rampant due to offshoring and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, NAMMI’s primary goal is to create a center of innovation in all aspects of manufacturing and design. 3D printing is paving the way for American factories to become competitive again. This technology has roots beginning from the 1970s, but is finally becoming increasingly applicable to modern industry via coupling with software. The technology behind 3D printing, often shortened to 3DP, has disrupted 2D based designs, manufacturing workflow, and supply chain management. Overall, the production process will be forever impacted by this invention. A 3D model of any shape or size can be created using a “CAD” program, or computer aided design, and a printer will build it layer by layer.

Source: 3D Printing for Rapid Manufacturing: This image shows a 3D imaging software analysis of the product, akin to what a company would draw prior to launch.

     Manufacturing trends in 3D printing involve updating traditional supply chain management elements using 3D software applications. For example, finite element analysis, or FEA, is a technique to eliminate errors and increase stability using numerical processes in industrial engineering. Technology has updated FEA to include 3D printing, and CAD software. This triad comes together to solve supply chain problems in both the manufacturing and engineering industry. FEA improvements have trickled down to other sub-sectors, such as aerospace and military companies, which also use FEA to solve complex problems. Primarily, companies that manufacture cars, enterprises dealing with transforming substances, such as the oil and gas industry, and companies dealing in precision-technology will use the FEA method. FEA was previously only used to theoretically test feasibility. Now, 3DP is helping in the physical testing of all sorts of manufactured devices, such as prosthetic limbs. Medical rapid prototyping, or MRP, is the new field being developed in this area of study, involving 3D models of human anatomy resulting from medical image data. 

     Computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, and 3D modeling are coming together to improve advancements in aerodynamic architecture. A aerodynamic modeling technique called non-uniform rational basis spline (commonly referred to as NURBS), used to improve shapes in design for performance, is being paired with 3DP

     The manufacturing industry’s use of 3DP include printers such as Z-Corporation’s ink-jet “concept modeler,” which is on the lower end of the pricing scale. Z-Corp.’s printer has become the third most popular and widely adopted layered manufacturing printer on the market. (Source: 3D Printing for Rapid Manufacturing)

     Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, was recently interviewed by McKinsey & Co. on disruptive technology and cited 3D printing as an invention on the forefront: “The screen you want to apply about technology is not what technologies are interesting, because there are so many that are interesting. You want to look at which ones have a chance of having a volume impact on many, many people, or large segments of society.” Schmidt specifically refers to 3DP as an example of such a revolution: “…it’ll be possible to build very interesting things from very interesting, new materials, which have all sorts of new properties. We already know that there’s a whole hobbyist area around buying these 3-D printers for plastic. Well, if you can get these new materials, you could put them in the printers, and then over time those printers will become capable of machining, mining, and producing these materials.” See this link for his interview - specifically, the Materials and Manufacturing" section. (Source: McKinsey.com)

Schmidt’s vision of 3DP and “machining and mining” is precisely where this industry is headed, with the addition of multi-material printers and 3DP software and hardware functionality geared towards more exotic material-handling.