Hola MaHigh-School - August 2017
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volution: 3D printing<br />
MONEY and TIME is the trigger<br />
here. As usual of course.<br />
Intricate designs were difficult<br />
and some even impossible to<br />
manufacture in a traditional<br />
way (forged, sculpted, etc). An<br />
example is to place your name<br />
inside a gun barrel. Cannot<br />
otherwise be done. That means<br />
that where a design otherwise had to be ‘broken’ into many<br />
different pieces for manufacture and then be assembled, here<br />
we just ‘print’ it in one go.<br />
GE Aviations claims that they have now manufactured an helicopter<br />
engine with only 16 parts instead of 900. Imagine what<br />
that is doing to supply chain? And to labour costs in putting<br />
900 ‘things’ together instead of 16? And time to manufacture?<br />
Revolution indeed.<br />
Airbus is extensively using 3D<br />
printed parts. Why? Cost effective,<br />
time effective and easy to<br />
improve the design.<br />
What we are also looking at is<br />
something ‘boring’. For being<br />
cost effective it was typically need to have a long production<br />
run of a component. Changing the design and having very<br />
small production runs was very expensive. Machines needed<br />
to be set up for these things. And now? Change the design and<br />
spool the file to the printer and there is the new component.
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