3D printing: the “duct tape” for the supply chain?

As AM becomes more accepted as part of a manufacturing supply chain, it is altering the way engineers work and develop products. We recently had a conversation with Daniel Lazier, product marketing manager at?Markforged.

Here are highlights from the interview.

Potential changes to the design process

One of the changes engineers can expect is to have greater control and empowerment at the point of need with 3D printers.

“Back in the day when I was a design engineer, the nature of my job was to create a design and then rely on a completely different and distinct set of resources, often outside of my business entirely, to make the part. And that might take weeks or months, depending on what the part was and what processes it was beholden to. I recall how frustrating that could be when the reality of your job, your timetable, and even your cost structure is dictated by someone completely outside of your business and outside of your control.

“The very nature of that job and that role changes when you’re empowered with equipment right on your desk,” continues Lazier. “In addition, the kind of components and parts that you rely on now can be produced right where you need them. And as an engineer, you are actually specifically involved with the creation of that part.

Design decisions

With 3D printing, designers can qualify a part all the way from prototype to production at a design lab or geographically distinct office, and then push that design to production where it may be pulled down by production resources somewhere completely different across the planet. This process is happening for a specific and growing band of use cases and applications, especially with printers like the Markforged Digital Forge, and other cloud manufacturing capabilities. To read more and listen to the interview, click here.