The technology for 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing become faster, easier to use

The technology for 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has existed in some form since the 1980s. However, the technology has not been capable enough or cost-effective for most end-product or high-volume commercial manufacturing. Expectations are running high that these shortcomings are about to change.
Several technology trends are feeding these expectations. An emerging class of mid-level 3-D printers is starting to offer many highend system features in a desktop form factor at lower price points. Printer speeds are increasing across the product spectrum; at least one high-end system under development could print up to 500 times faster than today’s top machines. And key patents are about to expire, a development likely to hasten the pace of innovation.
In a recent PwC survey of more than 100 industrial manufacturers, two-thirds were already using 3-D printing.

Figure 1: Prototyping has driven the adoption of 3-D printing so far. Future opportunities 3D printers chiefly used for prototyping

 Most were just experimenting or using it only for rapid prototyping, which has been 3-D printing’s center of gravity for most of its history. Canalys, a market research firm, anticipates changes ahead and predicts the global market for 3-D printers and services will grow from $2.5 billion in 2013 to $16.2 billion in 2018, a CAGR of 45.7 percent.¹
Despite these trends, the 3-D printing industry faces challenges. Rapid prototyping will remain important but is not the game-changer that will expand the technology into high-volume use cases. The industry should pivot to printing more fully functional and finished products or components in volumes that greatly outnumber the volumes of prototypes produced. For example, some makers of hearing aids and dental braces have adopted the technology for finished products. In addition, 3-D printing should supplement or supplant products and components manufactured traditionally and create items that can be manufactured in no other way.

Technology for 3-D printing will advance through loosely coordinated development in three areas: printers and printing methods, software to design and print, and materials used in printing.

To evolve their design and manufacturing strategies, many industry sectors are using 3-D printing solutions already in the market. (See Table 1.) Technology for 3-D printing will advance through loosely coordinated development in three areas: printers and printing methods, software to design and print, and materials used in printing. This issue of the PwC Technology Forecast examines each of these areas. This article assesses 3-D printer and printing method trends in performance, the management of multiple materials, and capabilities for producing finished products. Future articles will examine the software and the materials themselves.

Table 1: Emerging uses of 3-D printing in the different industry sectors.

Industry sector	Some emerging and near-term future uses of 3-D printing
Automotive and industrial manufacturing	Consolidate many components into a single complex part Create production tooling Produce spare parts and components Faster product development cycle with rapid prototyping, form and fit testing
Aerospace	Create complex geometry parts not possible with traditional manufacturing • Control density, stiffness, and other material properties of a part; also grade such properties over a part • Create lighter parts
Pharma/ Healthcare	Plan surgery using precise anatomical models based on CT scan or MRI Develop custom orthopedic implants and prosthetics Use 3-D printed cadavers for medical training Bioprint live tissues for testing during drug development
Retail	Create custom toys, jewelry, games, home decorations, and other products Print spare or replacement parts for auto or home repair, for example
Sports	Create complex geometry and shape not possible with traditional manufacturing Create custom protective gear for better fit and safety Create custom spike plates for soccer shoes based on biomechanical data Create multi-color and multi-material prototypes for product testing

The emerging shape of the 3-D printer industry

 

In 3-D printing, hundreds or thousands of layers of material are “printed” layer upon layer using various materials, or “inks,”² most commonly plastic polymers and metals. The many different printing technologies are generally material dependent. (See the sidebar “3-D printing technologies.”) For instance, fused filament fabrication (FFF) is used with plastics, stereolithography with photosensitive polymers, laser sintering with metals, and so on.
3-D printing technologies The printers must be improved in three areas to seize the opportunities that exist beyond today’s predominant use case of rapid prototyping:
Performance: Improve key performance characteristics, such as speed, resolution, autonomous operation, ease of use, reliability, and repeatability.
Multi-material capability and diversity: Incorporate multiple types of materials, including the ability to mix materials while printing a single object.
Finished products: Provide the ability to print fully functional and active systems that incorporate many modules, such as embedded sensors, batteries, electronics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and others.
Today’s 3-D printers are concentrated at two ends of a spectrum: high cost–high capability and low cost–low capability. (See Figure 2.) High-end printers are generally targeted at enterprises and 3-D printing service bureaus; low-end printers, which are often derivatives of open source RepRap³ printers, are targeted at consumers and hobbyists.

Figure 2: The emerging market for printers is defining a new category that has high capability at lower cost.

During the past year, a new class of printers in the middle has emerged. These printers from new entrants and established vendors have many of the higher-end capabilities at lower prices. For example, printers from FSL3D and Formlabs deliver higher resolution and smaller size using stereolithography technology and are priced at a few thousand dollars. Printers from MarkForged offer the ability to print using carbon fiber composites in a desktop form factor for less than $5,000. CubeJet from 3D Systems is priced under $5,000, can print in multiple colors, and brings professional features to a lower price point.⁴
Gartner predicts that 3D printers with the value (capabilities and performance) that is demanded by businesses and other organizations will be available for less than $1,000 by 2016.⁵ It is fair to expect that printer improvements will accelerate in the next few years, although the degree and nature of these changes will vary considerably across printing technologies and vendors.

Emerging trends in 3-D printer performance

Technology for 3-D printing will advance through loosely coordinated development in three areas: printers and printing methods, software to design and print, and materials used in printing.

While many characteristics define a printer’s performance, the key challenges are speed and ease of use.

Printers can be expected to get faster

Even for simple products, 3-D printing still takes too long—usually hours and sometimes days. Incremental improvements as well as new methods that have the potential for an order of magnitude change will help printers meet the challenge for greater speed. “There are lots of ways to improve speed by using higher-quality components and by optimizing the designs and movement of the lasers,” says Andrew Boggeri, lead engineer at FSL3D, a provider of desktop stereolithography printers. For instance, Form 1+, a stereolithography printer from Formlabs, uses lasers that are four times more powerful to print up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation printer Form 1.⁶
Most of today’s printers use a single printhead to deposit material. Adding more printheads that print at the same time can increase speed by depositing material faster while incorporating multiple materials or multiple colors of the same material. Multiple heads can also make many copies of the same design in the time it takes to print one. With such innovation, print speed can increase more or less linearly as the number of heads increases. At the hobbyist end, Robox sells a dual nozzle printer that the company says can print three times faster than single nozzle printers.
Speed is especially a challenge when printing larger objects. Large objects require more material to be pushed through the printer nozzle, which generally has a set rate for processing material. A partnership between Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Cincinnati Incorporated, a machine tool manufacturer, is addressing this challenge.⁷ The organizations are developing a large-scale additive manufacturing system. Their design will combine larger nozzles for faster polymer deposition, high-speed laser cutters that handle work areas in feet rather than inches, and high-speed motors to accelerate the pace at which printer heads are moved into position. The result will be a system capable of printing polymer components as much as 10 times larger, and at speeds 200 to 500 times faster than existing additive machines.
To control the movement of the printer head, 3-D printers use different approaches or architectures. Cartesian printers, which move a printhead in two dimensions on a plane, are the popular configuration today. Deltabot printers, also called Delta robot printers, use parallelograms in the arms like a robot. (See Figure 3.) “The Delta printers are going to basically take over all the Cartesian printers, because they have some significant benefits, one of which is speed,” predicts Joshua Pearce, associate professor at Michigan Technological University (MTU) and an active developer of open source 3-D printers. Delta configuration allows for higher speed, because the printheads are lighter and they use shorter paths from one point to another.


Manufacturing  by 3D printing