3D printing began 25-30 years ago with the invention of stereo lithography (SLA). Today, and especially in aerospace and medical markets, there are technologies for manufacturing functional parts in significant quantities from metals of many sorts. Some believe 3D printing will doom traditional manufacturing methods, such as CNC machining and cast parts. Another view is that 3D printing/additive manufacturing will establish a firm foothold in many applications, but leave plenty of room for traditional manufacturing.
Stereo lithography (SLA) has been used for creating plastic models since the early 1990’s. SLA parts have proven useful in allowing design evaluation, but are not functional. This technology did demonstrate that complex designs could be manufactured directly from digital imputs–overnight and without tooling or complicated set-ups.
Later, technologies such as fused deposition modeling permitted the manufacture of fully functional thermoplastic parts. Proficient Sourcing features a company with this FDM capability—see the article that follows below.
According to the “Printing Possibilities” article in the Nov/Dec 2013 Metal Casting Design and Purchasing magazine, “the investment casting industry has been using 3D printing since the 90’s to generate patterns for low run or prototype parts. Sand printing brings similar advantages to sand cast production parts.”
If you are interested in information about 3D sand casting, a good place to start is the Metal Casting Center’s website at the University of Northern Iowa: https://www.uni.edu/chas/news-events/11-12-13/new-3d-printer-metal-casting-center .
It remained until the early 2000’s before technologies were created to produce 3D printed metal parts. Laser sintering processes, direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), for example, became capable of manufacturing functional parts and devices.
Medical parts have been particularly appropriate for 3D printing, since in most cases there is a critical need for some custom item, but without the likelihood of mass volumes of the same part. An excellent early example is the burn mask developed by Total Contact (https://www.totalcontact.com/index.html). With the introduction of DMLS and similar technologies, it became possible to manufacture fully functional devices and implants for custom applications in a variety of medical areas, even major joint replacement parts. One of the reasons joint implants are good applications is the limited number of metals that are used—cobalt chrome and titanium—in the body.
In 2006 it became possible to employ a machine to make a single part with a variety of densities and material properties. About this same time a machine was disclosed that is able to print the majority of its own components. This allowed a user to essentially make duplicate devices for others.
The Nov/Dec edition of Medical Product Outsourcing has an article “3D Printing: A Solution or THE Solution?” This is a discussion of 3D printing in the medical market. The article reports great progress in 3D printing capabilities and advantages. Among those reported are these three:
“Design engineers obtain in a few days or even hours what would have taken weeks to produce by traditional tooled means or to outsource to a prototype-only supplier.”
“…we see a big increase in volume manufacturing of final devices—functional devices like spinal and orthopedic implants, for example. One of the most important reasons that 3D printing became a valid volume manufacturing method is that the performance of the resulting [metal] materials can now be considered equal or even better than those from classical manufacturing methods.”
“…through 3D printing, new types of devices can be developed that did not exist before because it is simply impossible to build them as one piece using traditional methods.”
This article, along with others, predict great promise for 3D printing in manufacturing products in greater and greater material variety. As with most new technologies, there needs to be a significant reduction in per-piece costs, but great progress is occurring.
Deloitte’s paper “Disruptive Manufacturing: The Effects of 3-D Printing” describes the progress of this technology and predicts a great impact globally. Their summary industry outlook is “3D printing will potentially have a greater impact on the world over the next 20 years than all of the innovations from the industrial revolution combined.” Here is a link to that report: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/insights-and-issues/ca-en-insights-issues-disruptive-manufacturing.pdf.
Proficient Sourcing has knowledge of several firms that have 3D printing capabilities for metal parts, and a much closer relationship with a FDM 3-D plastics company (see below). Just give us a call (513) 489-5252.