3D Printing Speed

Rapid growth in efficiency and market

The burgeoning 3D printing industry seems at times saturated with excitable chatter about its potential for rapid growth. Many, including our commander-in-chief, have touted it as one of the cornerstone technologies of the future. Often still, a number of professionals have mentioned its potential for the future of the manufacturing industry. It’s time we see some numbers to back it up.

An annual report released April 5 supports the pattern of 3D printing products, also referred to as additive manufacturing items, being on the upswing. The Wohlers Report, which has been called “the bible of 3D printing”, shows exponential growth, to the tune of 25.9% and over 5 billion dollars in sales.

So what’s to stop 3D printing from, basically, making everything for us already? The main obstacle thus far is size. This carries two separate difficulties: the size of the machines themselves being too big for personal use, and the size of many desired products being far too large to produce with the machines. While useful accessories, toys, and even guitars and prosthetic limbs have developed easily enough, the ever-ravenous consumer culture has been salivating over the idea of automobiles, buildings, bridges, and airplanes. These goals have proven far beyond the capable spectrum because they are too big and require far too much time to be mass-produced. That may be changing.

Recent developments in a “new generation” of the industry contend they could potentially speed up the 3D printing process by as much as 80-90% in some cases. This could be achieved through a few different avenues. Continuous liquid interface production balances light and oxygen to selectively photo cure liquid resin, growing a printed object without having to stop. This process can be 25 to 100 times faster than other methods. The animated printing approach repositions the projector to avoid cumbersome suction, and can double production time. Hewlett-Packard introduced a “multi-jet” method in 2014 that it claims can move up to 25% faster than most original methods. (One of these methods is called extrusion: see here for more details).

Most recently, Autodesk released the project they claim can reach 80-90% increases in speed. What appears to set this method apart right now is the inclusion of multiple heads to the printers. These heads, often referred to as “bots” end in the nozzles that draw objects. In traditional methods like extrusion, there has only been one nozzle, one bot. Autodesk’s research, detailed in an article April 13, has discovered a way to delegate robot workload. By making each bot responsible for printing a small section of an object, the San Rafael, Calif., software corporation has increased efficiency. The bots are placed in a gantry, and the sections they each print are automatically fused together during the printing process. The more bots in the array, the more quickly the object prints.

Don’t look now — but we could be printing out planes, trains, and automobiles soon enough.