3D printing proves its value as manufacturing evolves

Recently, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with ETH Zurich and Fraunhofer IGCV, IPT and IAPT, released a report on the current state of additive manufacturing (AM) and its future. Their goal was to provide a realistic understanding of what AM can deliver today and why some are achieving that potential while others are not, as well as define the most probable near-term future production scenarios and what needs to happen to make those scenarios a reality. Pat Carey, Senior Vice President of Strategic Growth for?Stratasys?addresses this subject.

Q: What are some of the roadblocks along the value chain that AM can address?

A: According to Carey, additive technology helps in several areas of the value chain including local production, the iterative process, and bureaucracy.

“The ability to produce a part locally is a big deal, especially when we’re all dealing with parts on boats coming from China,” notes Carey.

Also, companies are shifting to a more personal, mass-production model that favors additive manufacturing over other manufacturing technologies.

“I’ve been working with a number of product design firms that were following a traditional process of product design,” notes Carey. “Prototypes were a challenge …. with all the supply chain issues. …. Many of them have switched to using additive manufacturing. They wanted to change their processes, but changing processes in big companies is difficult. …. So, we’re seeing a number of large companies entertain new design processes which include faster iteration or skipping whole steps of iteration. One of the fun complaints I’ve heard from some customers is that the additive product process is faster than their bureaucracy can keep up with. So, it’s interesting to hear that from customers, ‘Pat, your technology is really helpful, but it’s so fast that the paperwork can’t keep up.’”

To read more, click here.