Just imagine if you can build your own product as you like with your own brand, specifications, colors and personal preference. Is it possible? Most probably yes in the future, with the application of 3D printing technology. The new era of producing your own product or personal manufacturing is just about to begin.
This kind of technology nowadays is also highlighted by number one person in the USA. Obama said: "A onces-huttered warehouse is now a state of the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything,". As trendsetter of the world innovation, I believe 3D printing will be massively applied all over the world. So, let’s take a look more deep about it.
3D Printing Overview
3D printing is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. Also known as "additive manufacturing" 3D printing involves a machine using a digital model to design a solid, complex product from various materials, from a simple sculpture, a toys, to a shoe, to most wildly imagination like perhaps a moon lunar base.
The first commercial 3D printer was based on a technique called stereolithography. This was invented by Charles Hull in 1984. Stereolithographic 3D printers position a perforated platform just below the surface of a vat of liquid photocurable polymer. Another common commercial 3D printing technology is fused deposition modeling (FDM). Here a semi-liquid material is extruded from a temperature-controlled print head to produce fairly robust objects to a high degree of accuracy. A key benefit of this technique is that objects can be made of out of exactly the same thermoplastics used in traditional injection molding.
A wide range of commercial 3D printers for industrial application are now available from companies including 3D Systems, Stratasys, Solid Scape, Objet and ZCorp. Another major player is envisionTEC whose Perfactory 3D printers projecting voxel datasets into a photopolymer.
If you want to start 3D printing for yourselves, a growing range of personal 3D printing initiatives, kits and printers are also now available. There are two open source 3D printing initiatives: Called RepRap which stands for the Replicating Rapid prototyper and Fab@Home. These initiatives are both based around online communities that use the web to share all designs and other information required to build a printer. Also the latest one in October 2011, Roland DG Corporation introduced the new iModela iM-01. The iModela is an inexpensive, easy-to-use desktop device that mills wax, foam, balsa wood and plastic materials commonly used in craft and hobby projects.
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Hamamatsu, Japan, October 5, 2011 Roland DG Corporation, a leading worldwide provider of 3D milling and engraving technologies introduced the new iModela iM-01.
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Advantages and disadvantages of 3D Printing
There two main point views for advantages and disadvantages of using 3D printing: industry perspective and end user or customer perspective.
For industry, some advantages of 3D printing are rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing, mass customization and reducing waste. Industrial 3D printers have existed since the early 1980s and have been used extensively for rapid prototyping and research purposes. 3D printing also had been used for rapid manufacturing which lies in the relatively inexpensive production of small numbers of parts. Finally, 3D Printing helps many industries make the product from the core up so it will have less waste.
From end user perspective, with 3D printing you can also create your own genuine product or customize unique products that you had ordered. There will be many companies provides services for customer to customize their order using simplified web based customization software, and order the resulting items as 3D printed unique objects.
Some drawbacks of 3D printing also be concerned like possibility of increase of counterfeit products or produce own illegal product such as making guns. A weapon made with a 3D printer could theoretically be formed from plastic, making it undetectable by traditional security measures.
3D Printing Applications
3D Printing technology has been applied in many industries such as automotive, manufacturing, aviation, medical, do-it-yourself, fashion and mobile industry. Like President Obama says that it will revolutionize the way we make almost everything. Some of 3D printing applications from 1990’s are summarized below.
The applications of 3D printing have increased in many industries from 1990’s to 2000’s. In 1990’s the first SLA machine is produced by 3D Systems and the first lab-grown organ is implanted in humans. Between 2000-2010, there are so many applications using 3D such as scientists engineer a miniature functional kidney that is able to filter blood and produce diluted urine in an animal in 2002, open-source collaboration with 3D printing by Dr. Adrian Bowyer in 2005, SLS leads to mass customization in manufacturing in 2005, major breakthrough for prosthetics with first person walks on a 3D-printed prosthetic leg, with all parts in 2008, and finally in 2010 world’s first 3D-printed robotic aircraft designed by Engineers at the University of Southampton and world’s first 3d-printed car - Kor Ecologic unveils Urbee, a sleek, environmentally friendly prototype car with a complete 3D-printed body at the TEDxWinnipeg conference in Canada.
There are also some current applications of 3D printing such as in mobile industry, architecture, and even outer-space. In the mobile industry, Nokia backs 3D printing for mobile phone cases. Nokia provide 3D printing development kit with releasing design files that will let owners use 3D printers to make their own cases for its Lumia phones. That project makes Nokia one of the first big electronics firms to seriously back 3D printing. Another application of 3D printing in architecture, Janjaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture in Amsterdam has been working with mathematician and artist Rinus Roelofs to design a house that will be built using a huge 3D printer. The other of 3D printing application that probably beyond our imaginations is printing your own moon base. The European Space Agency (ESA) is teaming up with London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners and others to explore the possibility of building a lunar base using a 3D printer from moon dust. The plan for the moon base envisages taking an inflatable dome as a base then using a giant 3D printer to build a wall out of bricks of local regolith or moon dust to protect up to four astronauts from radiation and meteorites.
What Next?
New technology application such as 3D printing will change many companies strategy from new products development to marketing mix strategy of the final products. They can use 3D printing for new product development with direct digital manufacturing (DDM). Direct digital manufacturing creates the shape precisely and instantly, using additive fabrication. Another major point is marketing; they now have to consider this kind of technology and applied those features like customization in their final product. It’s only matter of time that many big companies in the world will massively applied it and probably the one who not applied it will be leaved by their customers. Predictions for future applications, starting with today's infancy period, require companies to be flexible, ever-improving users of all available technologies in order to remain competitive.
3D printing has a bright future. Desktop 3D printers for the home are already become reality, and should cost no more than a few hundred dollars by near future. 3D printers capable of outputting in color and multiple materials also exist and will continue to improve to a point where functional products will be able to be output. It will provide a solid bridge between our imagination and the physical world therefore it will likely to play some part in all of our futures.
Just like the era of end user computing that had happened in the computer world, I believe the future of product development trend by using 3D printing will become the new era of end user producing. So, be prepared and who knows one day there will be 3D product market available like Apple’s app store or Google play android market today.
References:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21084430
- http://www.theatlantic.com/business/print/2013/02/is-3d-printing-overrated-not-at-all-says-ges-jeffrey-immelt/272965/
- http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/02/04/print-your-own-moon-base/
- http://individual.troweprice.com/staticFiles/Retail/Shared/PDFs/3D_Printing_Infographic_FINAL.pdf
- http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2013/01/21/dutch-architect-plans-to-build-house-using-giant-3d-printer/
- http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2011/10/10-digital-manufacturing-singer
- http://www.rolanddg.com/news_archives/2011/nr111005_im-01.html
