3D printing, aka, "fast prototyping" is changing the way we develop new products in America. I've had the opportunity to experience the revolution from both sides, and it's pretty amazing.

Working in new product development for an oilfield manufacturer for several years, I experienced the frustration of getting a clean sheet of paper design to the testing phase. As recently as the '90's prototypes and early production runs were often fabricated from steel plate, and although they functioned well, were not representative of the finished product. The problem was casting. That's an expensive process that was often begun by machining a billet to the final product (in some cases a wooden model was given to the foundry as a "plug" from which molds could be struck).

As you might imagine this process was long and very time-consuming. Small changes that had to be made to the castings, whether of valves or major load-bearing components, required weeks to get out of the foundry, then be machined, heat treated, and finished before they could go on test. In order to start recovering investment, the first two years of a product's life was often a series of redesigns - even after it had passed prototype testing and entered "first article" phase. You didn't arrive at a "stable" product for maybe 24 - 36 months. It was a headache for us - and the bane of our customer's existence. Fortunately we came up with some great products and our customers stuck with us - even during the "teething" period.

About ten years ago 3D printing became feasible. The first "printers" passed a pair of laser beams through a fluidized bed of thermoplastic to fuse tiny grains of plastic into a "solid" product at the point where they intersected. The finished workpiece had the consistency of a sand castle, and was about as fragile. They were suitable to be used as plugs for casting finished products, quickly eliminating the difficult "carving" or machining of a prototype. Because they were relatively fragile, they couldn't be used - even as a proof-of-concept product, but they were a big step along the way to "fast prototyping" we see today.

Now, using a process called Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), a product can be built up as fine threads of thermoplastic (usually ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, the same material used to make football helmets) that is strong, dimensionally stable, and suitable for many test applications. Final products that don't require ferrous materials can go directly from the CADD program to finished product - including items as diverse artificial heart valves or aircraft flare-dispenser magazines for the Air Force and Navy. Any product that has to be custom-fit or is produced in sufficiently low volumes as to not require an interim step to molding, can be put to work right out of the "printer".

How is this changing the auto industry? First used in the restoration of antique autos, FDM can replicate a part by scanning the worn or damaged part into the computer using a 3D scanner. "Virtual" repairs can be made to the part using a CADD program, and the file exported directly to the FDM machine, where it is built up in layers over a period of a few minutes to several hours.

This capability was seen by automakers as a quick way to check a product that never existed anywhere but as a series of binaries in the CADD system - outputting the file to assure it fits and operates as required in physical space. But there are more subtle uses for 3D printing - thanks to other features of CADD that can put the virtual model through a series of pressure, flexing and bending tests to determine ultimate strength through a process called "finite element analysis" that quickly shows the weak points in any part of a structure. Failure-prone weak areas can be built up or redesigned to produce the strength and flexibility needed for the total assembly - THEN the part can be printed for a function test.

It's being used today to develop artificial hearts, helicopter transmissions, rockbits, aircraft parts, and artificial limbs. The future applications are practically limitless. For the automaker, it means a faster, lower-cost turn-around from design to production, shorter test intervals, and fewer redesigns once the product is "in steel". In other words, your showroom just moved closer to the engineer's drafting computer.

http://individual.troweprice.com/pub...B-AB6D4B53C8D0

Direct Digital Manufacturing:

 

The artists that worked with clay will need to learn a new task. Technology continues to change and make things easier

 

Ford has something cool in the 3D printing field

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