Who hasn't heard about the disruption by 3-D printing to manufacturing? It's widely played in the media and it makes for nice headlines.
The biggest, most feared displacement is the perceived threat of 3-D printing to injection molding. That displacement hasn't occurred and it most likely won't. What has been occurring is a diffusion of remarkable innovations. It's a matter of 3-D printing finding its place in the fragmented, complex plastics manufacturing world. It is interesting to consider all the possibilities, especially as more innovations are introduced in 3-D printing.
Only a handful of companies currently print actual end-use parts. Those parts are complex and made in low volumes, so the companies do not currently pose much of a threat to traditional injection molding.
One possible disruption could be to other plastics processes with lower-volume manufacturing rates. You may have heard of Cincinnati Inc. This company's Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) technology has been used to print a working car. Its 3-D printed kayak was on display at Rapid, the country's largest trade show for additive manufacturing, which took place a weeks ago in Orlando. The kayak was printed in three hours with Cincinnati's print head, which now prints 80 pounds an hour. Maybe the makers of rotational molding equipment should be paying attention. As technology gets better, so, too will printing times.
As for injection molding, it appears the community is starting to embrace 3-D printing for rapid prototyping. It is a technique that can offer huge savings in development time and cost. That is a disruption injection molders can embrace.
At a recent event Milacron hosted for its injection molding machinery customers, representatives of a Stratasys reseller, Michigan-based Fisher Unitech, printed a mold, then used the mold to run parts on two Milacron machines.
In the real world, that means a mold can be printed, up to 100 parts can be molded, the parts can be tested, and the cycle can be repeated two more times with mold modifications before a customer orders a steel mold. Total time is typically about 18 days. The conventional process of ordering a mold, then undertaking three iterations of making and testing parts and updating the mold, takes about 10 weeks. Depending on the part, development lead time can be cut by 50 percent to 90 percent and cost cut from 50 percent to 70 percent.
3-D printing machines cost from just a few thousand dollars into the six figures, but the ROI can be quick with savings in reduced product development and mold validation times.
Not surprisingly, more companies are introducing innovations in machinery and equipment, and that was obvious at Rapid. The people I encountered there were enthusiastic, which I believe had more to do with the opportunities that lie ahead than the Florida sunshine.
The evolution of the technology can best be illustrated by what is occurring in biomedical applications. Only a few years ago, I watched biomedical engineers at the Cleveland Clinic 3-D print a model of a patient's liver in a single color. While at Rapid, I spent some time in Stratasys' booth, where I saw the J750. The machine, which has six print heads, printed a model of a human brain with the brain in one color and its arteries and veins in other colors.
3-D printing is appealing in niche markets, but officials I met at Rapid said they don't see it replacing injection molding. An official from Jabil, an H-P development partner, told me he could see 3-D printing potentially replacing only 20-30 percent of his company's current injection molding capabilities.
Another company official said injection molding will always have a place. Jason Rolland, VP of materials with Carbon 3D Inc., Redwood City, Calif., said 3-D printing is not going to compete with PE or PP injection molding on the scale of what would be needed for, say, making caps for water bottles.
"However, there is a major, unmet need with injection molding for designers, for low-volume manufacturing, for people making tens of thousands of parts, or, if you think about footwear, where you have evolving industries that are changing their design every quarter," Rolland said. "They change a design, they have, in some cases, 30 or 40 different sizes of shoes for men, women and children, and they're changing every quarter. All of that [requires] a different tool. Each one of those changes requires a change in injection molded tooling. So there are massive investments in tooling to keep up with that, and massive investments in keeping inventory for all that. 3-D printing fundamentally changes that."
In the automotive industry, Carbon worked with BMW, which wanted to create individual nameplates for its Mini Coopers. "You can't do that with injection molding," said Rolland. "It's impossible amounts of tooling. That is a job for a 3-D printer."
Angie DeRosa, managing editor
