Industrial Automation Magazine India

Additive Manufacturing gives designers unprecedented design freedom

Published on : Monday 11-11-2019

From composite sculptures to metal watches, 3D printing is rapidly evolving – what are the limitations?

One of the main limitations of 3D Printing is in terms of dimensional accuracy. 3D Printers do not produce parts which are as dimensionally accurate as machined parts. Therefore, when it comes to manufacturing critical components requiring tight dimensional tolerances, 3D Printing is either overlooked or it has to be accompanied by an auxiliary machining operation. There are limitations on material side as well. Generally speaking, 3D Printing materials do not have mature material properties as compared to conventionally available materials.

Cost of materials is right now an issue. How can this be controlled?

3D Printing industry is monopolistic in nature. The OEMs themselves sell the consumables (materials) and these consumables are highly priced. The solution to this problem is simple: Allow more research on material science by encouraging premier institutes and organisations to formulate indigenous materials. For this to happen, the OEMs need to be encouraged to open up their machines to 3rd party material manufacturers. This can be facilitated by government policies, incentives, and grants.

Skills is another major problem in this area, as in other emerging technologies. Time for a thorough overhaul of engineering education?

That goes without saying. And not particularly in this case, but in general, the education needs a serious reform. As for 3D Printing, I believe it’ll be the first and the most basic manufacturing technology that the students will ever be exposed to, well before they graduate out of school. So if 3D Printing becomes a part of the mainstream curriculum, students will be exposed to the art of making/manufacturing things from an early age.

How could companies exploit the potential of Additive Manufacturing to gain an edge?

Companies need to design parts for the technology that they want to manufacture it in.

Simply prototyping a part in Additive Manufacturing (AM) which was initially designed for Injection Moulding, will not add much value to the project. AM provides several advantages like faster timelines, light-weighted parts, etc., but the true potential of AM will not be realised until we design/redesign the part from an Additive Manufacturing perspective. Since Additive Manufacturing is not governed by the traditional design rules associated with tooling and moulding, it gives designers an unprecedented design freedom. This helps the designers to actually design the parts for function and efficiency without having to worry about undercuts and draft angles. The benefits are unparalleled. By making use of state-of-the-art tools like Generative design and topology optimisation, organisations can reap unsurpassed benefits in terms of part efficiency, giving them an edge over their competitors.

Experts believe additive manufacturing calls for new business models like leasing of printers and jobshops. Will this work?

Yes. In fact we work in a similar business model wherein we make use of the existing manufacturing capacity available in the market rather than investing into capex-intensive machines. I believe collaboration and aggregation, with an interplay of technology, is the way forward in manufacturing.

Gauresh R Khanolkar has been associated with Chizel right from its early days. Gauresh currently heads the Additive Manufacturing vertical and drives the New Product Development (NPD) Strategy at Chizel. He also contributes in writing technical articles for Chizel’s blogs. Gauresh is a practitioner of Algorithmic modelling, and has had an opportunity to serve as a guest faculty at MIT Institute of Design. He is an active member of his Alumni Association (NITRAA) and works in the capacity of Chapter Secretary for the Pune region.