3D Printing Brings New Business Opportunities
How do you make a single custom part? For decades you ordered a batch or machined one at tooling cost. That constraint is what changes.
How do you make a single, custom part? For decades you didn’t. You ordered a batch, or you machined one and paid to set up a machine for a single thing. That constraint is what changes.
3D printing, or additive manufacturing, takes a digital design and builds it into a solid object, layer by layer. Charles Hull patented the core method, stereolithography, in 1986. Since then it has moved from shoe prototypes to car components to building designs.
For years the use was prototypes: hold a new product in your hands before committing to a production run. Companies like Z Corp. push past that. They scan an existing tool, then print a replica ready for use, not a model but the working piece. This video shows how.
Where the technology is taking us
Peter Weijmarshausen, co-founder and CEO of 3D printing company Shapeways, frames it this way:
"Imagine if you only made what you need, or imagine if you are a designer and could bring your product to market in days, not years. Imagine products that can all be made locally. 3-D printing is relevant for everyone, regardless of your technological background."
An astronaut’s only tool breaks on a spacewalk. They print another. You are assembling a cabinet and an oddly shaped bracket is missing from the box. You won’t call the manufacturer and wait a week. You find the file and print it.
The same method reaches into medicine. Surgeons could print custom prostheses on demand, and researchers are working toward printing skin and tissue for complex surgeries.
For a business, the economics shift. One product no longer needs a chain of processes and machines. You print the final item. Manufacturing and transport costs fall because production moves next to demand.
The hardware keeps getting cheaper and smaller. The Vienna University of Technology built a 3D printer weighing 1.5 kilograms and costing around 1,200 Euros, the smallest of its kind at the time. The first 3D printing pen, 3Doodler, reached the market the same season.
Watch Youngstown, Ohio. President Obama proposed 15 advanced manufacturing hubs across the U.S., and Youngstown is the first. It is becoming a center of this manufacturing wave.
The technology moves fast and adds materials every year. If you design, treat patients, build products, or run a company, the way things get made is shifting under you. Pay attention.