3D Printing 3D Printing

Issue: 3D Printing 3D Printing By: Sharon O'Malley Pub. Date: October 29, 2018 Access Date: September 26, 2021 DOI: 10.1177/237455680432.n1 Source URL: http://businessresearcher.sagepub.com/sbr-1946-108274-2907524/20181029/3d-printing ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Will it disrupt traditional manufacturing? Executive Summary The rapid spread of 3D printing technology promises to hold significant gains for businesses, its advocates say. The printers are enabling entrepreneurs to drastically reduce their costs for producing prototypes. They also enable small businesses to manufacture limited quantities of products, customize offerings for individual clients and introduce new products in a cost-efficient way. And the adaptation of 3D printers for materials other than plastic has opened the door to printing products ranging from human tissue to food to small buildings. But for all the promise of 3D printing, experts warn of potential downsides, including disruption of trade patterns, loss of jobs, questions about quality and the danger of unscrupulous operators counterfeiting trademarked products. Key takeaways include: The market for 3D printers has grown by 80 percent since 2016 and could quadruple over the next decade as prices fall and operational speed rises. The number of U.S. companies that use 3D printers is still a minority, although a growing one. The United States and Germany are the global leaders in the 3D printing industry. Full Report A Colombian boy, Daniel Garavito, gives his 3D-printed prosthetic hand a try. The printers can now create a wide range of sophisticated products. (Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images) When thirtysomething parents Isabel and Trevor Hardy of Boston saw how much mess their baby, newly weaned from the bottle, was making at mealtime, they came up with a design for a spoon shaped and sized just right for solid-food beginners. They put their heads together with an entrepreneur friend, Marcel Botha, a dad to two little ones himself, and decided to make a prototype of the baby-friendly spoon. They called it Spuni, and discovered that children found its smaller, flatter shape easier to handle. That prototype, and the half dozen that followed as the team of friends repeatedly tweaked the design, cost them about $5 apiece, Botha estimates. He says the cost per unit might have been at least $50 if they had taken a traditional approach to research and development. Instead, they found a company with a 3D printer to make their models, using baby-safe plastics like the ones used for pacifiers and baby bottle nipples. Page 2 of 10 3D Printing SAGE Business Researcher ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Printing the test models, Botha says, “allow[ed] us flexibility of time and cost to produce various prototypes until we created the perfect unit.” Once the spoons were for sale, New York-based Spuni mass-produced them using traditional manufacturing methods. Entrepreneurs are turning to 3D printing – also called “additive manufacturing” – in increasing numbers to save money on prototypes and to manufacture limited quantities of their products. Small business owners are using the printers to customize their merchandise for discerning clients and to add new selections to their product lines, without shelling out thousands of dollars for a new, industrial-style mold every time they introduce or alter a design. Universities, medical labs, tech companies and hobbyists have successfully used 3D printing to create printed versions of everything from human tissue to small buildings to guns. Yet even as 3D printing enables entrepreneurs and small business owners to start and expand companies, some observers see a downside. They predict its quick adoption has the potential to cause disruptions in global trade patterns and cost jobs. While no agency tracks the number of startups adopting 3D printing, experts agree that companies of all sizes are experimenting with the technology, which builds an object layer by layer by printing over the same area again and again. In fact, according to 3D printing expert Wohlers Associates, a Colorado consulting firm, the $7.3 billion additive manufacturing industry has surged by nearly 80 percent worldwide since 2016 when measured by the number of 3D printers sold and companies making the devices. 1 The number of U.S. companies that use the technology is increasing, although it is still a minority. 2 The United States holds the lead – barely, with Germany in second place – when it comes to “the degree to which [a country’s] labor skills, industrial capabilities, governance, and economic assets support additive manufacturing,” according to the global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom and Singapore are distant challengers, and Australia and China also are developing the technology. 3 3D Market Projected to Reach $17 Billion Projected global 3D industry market value, in billions, 2014-20 Source: “3D Printing: A Manufacturing Revolution,” A.T. Kearney, 2015, p. 4, https://tinyurl.com/yakyj9s4 Page 3 of 10 3D Printing SAGE Business Researcher ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The worldwide market for 3D printer hardware, supplies and services will grow to more than $17 billion by 2020, according to a projection by a global management consulting firm. A 3D printer works somewhat like a desktop inkjet printer, which releases ink onto a sheet of paper to print words and photos. If the printer continually reprinted the same thing onto the same spot on the paper, the ink on the letters and pictures eventually would build up. Instead of ink, a 3D printer deposits layers of molten plastic or powder, in most cases, which build up, fuse together and harden with the help of an adhesive or an ultraviolet light. The printer makes multiple two-dimensional prints that sit on top of each other, creating the 3D object. 4 The process can take minutes or hours, depending on the complexity of the design, which is created on a computer that uses design software and is connected to the printer. Some printers can work with materials other than plastic; for example, chefs are experimenting with molten chocolate and other food, and newer printers can handle metals – a use, a Wohlers report said, that is growing significantly. 5 The market for professional devices that can print with ceramic and other materials is expanding as well. 6 German manufacturing giant Siemens has forecast that the market for 3D printers could quadruple over the next 10 years, as prices dip and printing speeds quicken. 7 Printer prices range from less than $1,000 to more than $150,000, depending on the size, quality and features. 8 For a small business, a lower-end printer will suffice if the company is printing limited quantities, says John Kray, owner of a small 3D printing service, Hydra Research, in Portland, Ore. Kray bought a $2,000 printer when he was a junior in college in 2016, hoping to solve a problem with flimsy handles on the machines in the coffee shop where he worked part time while earning his physics degree. He designed a replacement handle and printed it on his 3D printer – and it worked. He started offering to print for others, for a fee, and when he graduated in 2017, he made a business out of providing that service. He also printed replacement parts for a local company that makes trench hole diggers and designed an alternative tool head for the LulzBot Mini 3D printer he owned. Then, he designed his own 3D printer and used the LulzBot Mini to produce most of the parts he needed to build it. Called the Nautilus, the printer will be for sale by the end of the year for approximately $2,500. If he had not been able to print the parts for his invention, Kray says, “it straight-up wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have had the money. The [research and development] budget for this printer has been multiple orders of magnitude less than it would have been using traditional manufacturing methods.” Entrepreneurs Save Money For small business owners, saving time and money is what drives them to experiment with 3D printing. Massachusetts-based startup Desktop Metal, for example, estimates that its new 3D printer, for which it is taking advance orders, will print metal objects 100 times faster and up to 20 times cheaper than traditional manufacturing processes. 9 The UPS Store began offering 3D printing services at six locations in 2013 and will expand the service to 100 stores by the end of 2018. Some 90 percent of UPS’s 3D customers were small business owners wanting to create prototypes, said 3D print expert Daniel Remba, who led the UPS effort for several years before moving to digital entertainment company NTN Buzztime to be its business development manager. 10 The jobs he oversaw, Remba told The Wall Street Journal, took between 20 minutes and two days to print and cost a few dollars to a few hundred. Going the 3D route saved the entrepreneurs from paying thousands for a process called injection molding, the traditional way to create prototypes. 11 The result, says Kray, is that more entrepreneurs are able to bring their ideas to market. He estimates that he would have had to pay $27,000 to tool the molds for his printer parts and another $16 per part if he had used injection molding. Using the 3D printer, he paid $3.50 per part with no tooling fee. Kray says 3D printing “will power a lot more entrepreneurs and engineers around a good product idea that is really good but previously wouldn’t have been financially feasible because the development costs would be too high.” While Kray says he is confident that his 3D-printed parts are the same quality as manufactured items would be, he says the technology might not be suitable for heavy-duty objects.

Load more