Technology has won over every sector. The manufacturing sector is no longer behind when it comes to using technology to its advantage. The manufacturing sector has been using software to seed their production process and deliver quality products to their customers. One such use of technology can be seen in printed products.
3D printing, also known as additive printing, has gained immense popularity in the manufacturing sector in recent times. It bears numerous benefits to the manufacturers and makes their production process efficient. It has given tough competition to the traditional printing methods and is now one of the most wanted technologies in every firm. Let’s take a sneak peek at the various advantages of additive printing for manufacturers!
Printing of complex designs
Additive printing has made design printing easy and flexible. It allows the manufacturing firms to print complex designs which used to be a tedious task into traditional systems. Additive printing is free from all restrictions that the manufacturers used to face earlier and hence there is increased flexibility in designing.
Increased speed and efficiency
Prototyping was time-consuming using traditional methods as the machine-made parts used to take several hours to be created. Additive printing can create the same parts in a lesser time as compared to the traditional systems. This allows the manufacturers to complete every stage of production at a faster rate. The system increases the speed and efficiency of the prototyping process.
Printing on Demand
The traditional printing systems could not cater to urgent or last-minute printing requirements. This made the manufacturers store the prints in bulk. Additive printing has a print of demand feature which allows the manufacturers to create prints as and when required. This saves huge storing costs as the space is no longer occupied with bulk prints. Additive printing saves the designs in a 3D model. Hence, locating the CAD field is fast, easy, and cost-effective.
Efficient and lightweight parts
Additive printing uses plastic as its primary printing material. Plastic parts are lightweight as compared to the metal parts that are reused in manufacturing. These parts improve the efficiency and cater to the weight issues in certain industries such as automobile and aerospace. Further on, additive printing also has a feature to add specific functions to the parts such as heat or electric resistance using tailored materials.
Faster production
Additive printing makes the production cycle easy by delivering parts within a few hours. It depends on the complexity of the design. The parts which usually require a couple of hours on the machine are a matter of one-hour on3D printing. This saves production time and allows the manufacturers to produce more in a given period.
Minimum or no wastage
Traditional printing methods are used to cut out materials from large chunks of non-recyclable products to produce parts. This involved huge wastage of resources and increased production costs. Additive printing uses the resources required to produce the arts and nothing more or less. This makes the production efficiency, reduces the wastage to minimum zero, and also lowers the material costs.
Cost efficiency
It is a common myth that additive printing is costly as it requires a new setup. However, the materials and components used for additive printing are affordable and the printing process is cost-effective as well. As we have discussed already, it reduces wastage and costs of materials as well, which in turn saves the production cost to the manufacturers.
Easy to access and use
The setup for additive printing is easy to use and access. Moreover, if a manufacturer does not want to install the system on their own, they can outsource additive printing services. This can save them the transportation cost of getting the parts as well.
Environmentally friendly
The reduction in wastage of materials makes additive printing an environment-friendly process to produce parts. Moreover, the system uses lightweight parts which improve the fuel efficiency of the products. Such factors contribute towards making the production greener.
Above were some of the reasons why you must use additive printing for your manufacturing. If you wish to install an additive printing setup for your firm, contact the experts today!
