3-D Printing Revolution

Dictionaries have multiple definitions of the verb “to print” but none of them remotely conjure up images of objects like prosthetic jaws, jewellery, lampshades, iphone covers , shoes or even museum exhibits — all of which can now be printed with the help of special 3D printing machines.

Burson-Marsteller

• Printing in 3D may seem bizarre. In fact it is similar to clicking on the print button on a computer screen and sending a digital file to an inkjet printer. The difference is that the “ink” in a 3D printer is a material which is deposited in successive, thin layers until a solid object emerges.
• The general term the industry uses for this is “additive manufacturing”, but the most widely used devices are called 3-D printers.
• The printing of parts and products has the potential to transform manufacturing because it lowers the costs and risks. No longer does a producer have to make thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of items to recover his fixed costs.

• Mass-manufacturing identical items may not be necessary or appropriate any more, since 3D printing allows for a great deal of customisation. Indeed, in the future some see consumers downloading products as they do digital music and printing them out at home, or at a local 3D production centre, having tweaked the designs to their own tastes. That is probably a faraway dream. Nevertheless, a new industrial revolution may well be on the way.

• By far the biggest adopter of additive technology is the medical devices sector and, around the world, many patients sport hip replacements, dental crowns or even cranial implants that have been produced by clinicians on laser-sintering machines. Indeed, the largest-volume application of additive manufacturing is in the production of hearing aids, with customised hearing-aid casings now almost exclusively made using additive techniques.
• The biggest spur for adoption of the technology in the medical world is not customisation, but economics. With additive, because the component is built in particles, densities can be changed and surfaces made porous so that it’s not necessary to go through secondary processes. It’s a lot cheaper.

• Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things.
• Ultimately, this suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough.
• Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before.
• As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers.