Where’s the real value in additive? – An AM Perspective (Part 2)
Where’s the real value in additive manufacturing??That’s a great question that’s been asked by many an exec over the last three decades, and I’d suspect that consultants have made $100M or more at this point answering that question in a dozen different ways.?The fact that each of those dozen, or more, answers was more-or-less right gives a strong hint at the extent of the versatility in the real value AM offers.
Thinking back over my 8 years in 3d printing, and my few exposures to it as a customer before, I can generate a pretty substantial list of how printing brings value to different applications.?Narrowing a bit to my area – aerospace and defense – and as I noted in the previous post, skewing toward the industrial applications vice the prototyping ones, every value I have seen realized roles up into two major categories 1) Design advantages or 2) Supply Chain advantages.
What I have always found most interesting, is that the design category is usually what gets the most attention, hype, and discussion, but in my experience, it’s the supply chain category that has been the most impactful thus far in industry.?I say “thus far” as some not-so-subtle foreshadowing to a future post on where the long term value will come from additive.
Design values, in additive for aerospace at least, pretty much come down to light-weighting.?Aerospace is all about vehicles and other things that move.?Things that move require energy to start, change, or stop their motion.?The heavier something is, the more energy is required to affect its motion, and energy is costly.?So we want things light in aerospace – to make them less expensive (and environmentally impactful) to fly.?Light-weighting with additive is one of the most obvious and easy to grasp additive values and gets its share of talk – usually focused on replacing one material for another lighter material, making a material less dense with an internal lattice, or through topology optimization (which is optimizing the shape to minimize material use).?There is a fourth opportunity in this category which gets a little more “out there,” and that is multi-functionality.
With lattices and topology optimization, the goal is to use less mass.?With multi-functionality, the goal is to use the same mass for more purposes.?For example, if we can replace a structural bracket and an electrical cable harness with a single part that both provides the structural support and also carries the required electrical signals, you use less total mass because you use what mass you keep more efficiently - for more purposes.
But, despite all the talk about design and light-weighting, the values that have driven better than 90% of the actual 3d printing adoption in aerospace and defense part production are on the supply chain side.?Why is this??Because even large quantities in aerospace are relatively small quantities and the need for those small quantities can be spread globally.
Within the supply chain category, I see three groupings – 1) low rate production, 2) location or proximity to need, and 3) part count reduction through assembly consolidation.
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Let’s take the last one first.?Why isn’t assembly consolidation a design value, as it seems to be similar to multi-functionality discussed above?? We’re categorizing by the reason for adoption.?In the case of multi-functionality, we’re designing for optimum use of mass leading to multi-functional design.?When we look at assembly consolidation, we might save mass incidentally in some applications, but that’s not the value being sought.?The value is to simplify the procurement and assembly of multiple small parts and instead make or buy a larger and more complex part instead of an assembly – reducing the number of parts to be procured and stocked, and reducing the amount of labor to assemble.?Both the procurement and assembly involve risks which the consolidation reduces.
The other two supply chain values – low rate production and proximity to need break down further into a number of different application-driven values, which are all shown in the following graphic, but regardless of which specific form the value takes, all of these supply chain values are fulfilled, to varying degrees, through an additive approach.?All technologies are not created equal when it comes to these values, and looking deeper here helps explain the success of the FDM technology and Stratasys in aerospace.?All additive technologies provide low volume economic benefits over mass production technologies like injection molding, but where powder bed technologies optimize for low to medium quantities, FDM can provide an economic order quantity as low as one.
Being able to produce the one part you need, wherever you need it, is the holy grail for aircraft sustainment, and this has driven and is driving a significant portion of additive adoption in aerospace today.?It is also enables sustainability as you aren’t wasting parts sitting on shelves and you’re not emitting carbon shuttling parts to where they are needed urgently.
So, to summarize. There are both supply chain and design benefits that can drive AM adoption. Today, the supply chain values dominate reasons for adoption while design values generally get all the attention.
Next time, I’m going to explore this point further and tackle the surprisingly thorny question of “mass production” and whether or not it is really additive’s true place in manufacturing.
Thanks to Stratasys and PADT, Inc #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #aerospace #defense #aerospaceanddefense
Past Posts:
Sr Account Exec @Stratasys | MBA, Aerospace / Space and Defense Production Additive Manufacturing to Material and process specs / 3D Printing prototypes / MRO / ITAR / FAR / DFAR / DPAS / DDTC / NIST / FAR 25.853
1 年Some great points - worth the read - With lattices and topology optimization, the goal is to use less mass.?With multi-functionality, the goal is to use the same mass for more purposes.
Owner, Quigley Design
2 年The consolidation of assemblies was one of the key selling points for “alternative” production options, like superplastic forming, in aerospace and automotive. But the real benefits only accrued when it was combined with design, and more importantly getting design requirements understood across an organisation. Due to the way procurement often works supply chains are presented with data and to to “make that”. This doesn’t work at all for newer processes like AM-which is ironic given the proliferation of upload and print services. The final factor that really pushed the technology over the edge of the acceptance cliff was the ability to simulate process and parts. Validation for production during design was seen as critical in certain sectors. I feel that this is an area AM is currently lacking in, whether it is materials, processes or parts themselves (simulation of anisotropic structures is no simple task) and ensuring consistency between builds even less so.
Nice read