Advantages and Disadvantages of Additive Manufacturing

Discuss About The Additive Manufacturing Technolo Prototyping.

The concept of 3D printing has currently being considered as a spark to a new revolution in industry. The main purpose of the report is to understand these concepts. It is also known as additive manufacturing. The technology of 3D printing allows to develop customized products in a very less cost. Therefore, additive manufacturing technology has a profound effect at both form and industry level. One of the major benefits of additive manufacturing is that, it utilizes direct digital manufacturing process by directly transforming a 3D data its corresponding physical parts (Weller, et al., 2015). Furthermore, it enables to produce functionally integrated parts in a single production step. The report evaluates the different aspects of 3D printing and the reason why 3D printing is also referred to as additive manufacturing or AM. The report also discusses whether 3D printing is suitable for high or low volumes of production. 3D printing is most valuable in certain situations, which are discussed in the report (Campbell, et al., 2011). 3D printing has almost turned the traditional manufacturing obsolete. The report discusses the reason for the same.

3D printing is more appropriately called additive manufacturing because of its working process. In 3D printing, the three-dimensional objects are developed by adding layer upon layer of materials or mould that is being used to develop the object. This mould can be made up of plastic, concrete and even metal. The process of additive manufacturing includes a computer, a 3D modelling software and printing equipment. This printing equipment takes the data input from the modelling software and lays down successive layer of moulding materials in order to fabricate the 3D object. The 3D printing or additive manufacturing is most significantly used in form of rapid prototyping. It finds its usage in designing products of aircrafts, dental restoration, automobiles and in medical implants as well.

Additive manufacturing deals with designing a component by depositing materials in layers. The process of adding materials layer by layer in 3D printing is a professional production technique that largely differs from the traditional or convectional process. Hence, the entire process is appropriately known as additive manufacturing (Chua & Leong, 2014). It enables to give shape and structure to a customized design by adding a range of different components one layer after another. The technology of 3D printing helps in developing highly complex structures, which are light and stable. This is one of the major advantages of 3D printing.

Usage of Additive Manufacturing in Different Industries

The process of 3D printing or additive manufacturing includes application of a thin layer of powder material to a building platform, the platform is lowered by addition of the different layers of materials, that are fused together to develop a 3D structure. Since the working process includes development of a structure by adding subsequent layers of materials, it is also known as additive manufacturing.

3D printing presently is used for low volume of production. However, it has a huge potential for high volume production as well. 3D printing was originally designed targeting rapid prototyping. However, this technology is not only used for developing prototypes but also used for developing actual products. The traditional printing process such as injection moulding is most widely used in large-scale manufacturing process. On the other hand, the technology of 3D printing is more cost effective for low volume of production (Weller, et al., 2015). The engineers and designers for conceptualizing a design and testing its feasibility generally use the 3D printing. This is because if a small manufacture is considered, one f the most expensive part of developing a product is tooling. The technology of 3D printing reduces these extra costs by developing a prototype in much lower cost, thereby facilitating the low volume production in a lesser budget. The use of 3D printing is significant in developing precise micro parts for different industrial usage (Mueller, 2012). However, the machines of additive manufacturing or 3D printing might take a longer time in processing and manufacturing a part of high volume production, as it requires a component to be assembled by one layer at a time. Therefore, it can be deduced that 3D printing is more suited for low volumes of production as it considerably saves a lot of the time and money (Kietzmann, et al., 2015). However, with the recent advancement in the field of 3D printing and additive manufacturing, it would be possible to implement the process of 3D printing in large volume of production in recent future.

3D printing is widely used in various sectors such as education, industry, architecture and construction. However, it is most valuable for its application in healthcare. The process of 3D printing helps in creating different medical devices, dental and prosthesis, which provides comfortable solution to the patients in need.

The 3D printing has varied application in chemical industry as well. It helps in enlargement of molecular structures and mechanical parts that can be used for laboratory tooling.  3D printing has made it possible to capture the exact look and structure of a molecular structure, which was otherwise not possible (Suchubert , et al., 2014).

Additive Manufacturing and High/Low Volume Production

Furthermore, 3D printing is cap able of printing different integral parts of machines that are otherwise very complex to design (Gibson, et al., 2014).

Therefore, it can be said that, 3D printing is valuable in structuring and manufacturing some vital components in much lower cost and time.

With the increasing popularity of 3D printing, it is estimated that 3D printing market is expected to garner almost $8.6 billion by the year 2020. Asia-Pacific region is seen to be the fastest growing market of 3D printing as the technology has a varied usage in different sectors such as healthcare, automobile and consumer industry. In the year 2010, the Ganter report identified the process of 3D printing as a transformational technology in the hype cycle in technology trigger phase (Campbell, et al., 2011).

The technology of 3D printing is expected to reach a take-off point within the next decade. 3D printing revolution is occurring across the world and it is focused on reducing the cost and complexity of the generating 3D models.

 Therefore, this technology will continue to advance and is expected to gain broader acceptance and use in different industries. This will further help in improving the quality and of the products designed with the help of 3D printing process.

The process of additive manufacturing is designed is such a way that it makes prototyping and manufacturing easier. Therefore, this technology has been in focus of discussions in manufacturing industry (Vaezi, et al., 2013). 3D printing is a process that makes use of special equipments in assembling and object layer by layer. This provides an unique advantage of this product over traditional manufacturing.

3D printing has been successful in taking the place of traditional manufacturing to a large extent as it offers numerous advantages over the process of traditional manufacturing. For example, if a prototype that is built with the help of traditional manufacturing process needs rework it becomes very difficult to implement the same apart from a huge amount of additional cost expense (Lipson & Kurman, 2013). On the other hand, in case of 3D printing, if a prototype needs a rework, the new design can be easily programmed into the 3D printer and can be redesigned relatively faster.

Another most significant advantage of 3D printing over traditional manufacturing is that, it prevents wastage and is resource efficient. Only the material that passes through the extruder of 3D printer is used unlike the injection moulds that require extra materials for filling the mould (Berman, 2012). However, the scrap materials of the injection moulds are recycled but the process consumes a lot of time and requires extra labour as well. The traditional manufacturing process generally requires a large number of workers while that of additive manufacturing or 3D printing requires only the necessary raw materials and blueprint to produce the same (Ventola, 2014). However, the process of 3D printing is not suitable for large-scale production.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be deduced that 3D printing or additive manufacturing is a leading technology that is expected to gain a wider popularity and acceptance in recent future. The process of 3D printing is also called additive manufacturing as a component is developed by adding layer upon layer in this process. The process of 3D printing makes the process of prototyping easy and cost effective. It finds its usage in development of complex structures as well. It has an extensive usage in engineering and medical industry. The increasing popularity of 3D printing is bound to make the traditional manufacturing obsolete. However, 3D printing is not suitable for large volume of production.

1. 3D printing can gain much wider acceptance with technical advancement enabling its usage in large volume of production as well.
2. The 3D printing technology should increase the range of materials it incorporates in printing process.

References

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