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.
1Despite 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 RepRap
3 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.
4Gartner 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.
6Most 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
