Additive Manufacturing: Boost to startup ecosystem with new path of production.

Many Startups, Innovators and Ideas remain on paper and ends in short time, remains unavailable as innovative product.

The reason is one and simple, manufacturing process: tooling and mold requirements. When innovator wants to turn his concept, his ideas as final product in the market, it has to go through several cycles right from conceptual designing, CAD Modelling and new product development cycles followed by many iterations and changes in design with respect to prototyping and functional testing results. Once it gets through the Product Development Cycles (PDC/NPD) choosing appropriate manufacturing process comes in picture.

Manufacturing any products/components traditionally needs to develop production lines with each process station, assembly lines with automation, end arm of tooling's, grippers for pick & place and assemble, design & fabrication of molds, fixtures and many auxiliary non-revenue generating parts in each process station like custom work holdings, jigs, grippers, gauges etc.

Or getting these products/components outsourced needs a huge commitment to manufacturing units to setup these tools for some initial large volume orders, and this commitment is Set-Back point to startups and innovators not only because of high initial costs but also restricting innovation in product upgradation because of locking the design for sake of tooling, manufacturing and also for production inventory. For innovators and startups this is too much. After doing all this the unpredictable response from market is key factor and all ideas ends here.

Additive Manufacturing is solution for this Set-Back, it will take this burden of initial investment off and can play vital role in predictable demand planning and supply. Simple fact that AM is tool less manufacturing technology making it as booster for startup ecosystem and innovators.

AM is disruptive technology which is changing everything because of simple fact that it can print anything and everything. AM is revolutionary and key driver in on going industry 4.0 and manufacturing paradigm shift because it is changing business models, decentralizing production hubs, shrinking supply chains, and the convenience of producing customized goods with elimination of labor, tooling requirements, assembly, logistics and inventory costs and it alter the global manufacturing market of worth $13T, significantly degrading the importance of Chinese export manufacturing platforms. Adoption of AM significantly in shop floors and for end-parts indicates AM is maturing and it has overcome the hype of the last decade to emerge as a viable manufacturing technology in its own right. 

The current Powder Bed Fusion 3D Printing technologies like recently announced SAF? Selective Absorption Fusion by Stratasys(SAF technology uses an infrared-sensitive HAF (High Absorbing Fluid) to fuse particles of polymer powder together in discreet layers to build parts. It uses Big Wave? powder management, a proprietary technology that includes powder distribution across a bed, where industrial-grade Piezo-electric print heads jet the fluid in prescribed areas to create each layer of the part. This is followed by exposure to infrared energy, which causes the areas with HAF to melt and fuse together. The sequence is repeated until the parts are completed.), HP Multi Jet Fusion, Selective Laser Sintering technologies in polymers and SLM/DMLS in Metals are significantly faster and produce parts with same strength as injection molding with added benefits from Design for Additive Manufacturing and more important it goes directly from CAD to end part, you can print thousand different parts at a single time or same part. AM us actually bridging the gap between conceptual design to final part in market.

AM with predictable demand planning and producing parts in mid-batches, which will help to have market feedback and provision for design changes based on feedback, this will boost the start-up economy. Decentralizing manufacturing with AM increases the efficiency of the supply chain and reducing dependency on offshore imports and manufacturing.

With the help of design for additive manufacturing, we can get feasibility over traditional manufacturing constraints and can improve product design with generative designs & topology optimization. This results in improving the functional efficiency of parts with material saving and simplifies and consolidated complex assemblies. This helps hugely to reduce carbon footprint.

Process capability and machine learning are making AM machines smarter and reliable with consistent repeatability and accuracy. With the ability of a process to produce output within customer's specification limits.

 Additive Manufacturing for Digital Manufacturing Transformation

• Rapid Innovation & Faster Product Development Cycles
• Production enablers: Conformal cooling molds, jigs, fixtures, end of arm tooling and many more
• Shorter time to market
• Batch Manufacturing with predictable demand planning
• Security to legacy parts
• Digital Inventory & On-Demand Manufacturing
• A more efficient supply chain with local manufacturing
• Reduced Carbon Footprint

 Thus, Additive Manufacturing is boosting startup ecosystem with new path of production.