3D printing is a process of making a three-dimensional object with the help of a CAD model or a 3D model. In this process, any solid object is created by solidifying materials layer-wise. There are a lot of advantages of 3D Printing that everyone must know. In this article, we will discuss the top 10 Benefits of 3D Printing.
A Brief History of 3D Printing
Before discussing the advantages, let’s take a look into the interesting history of 3D printing. Back in the 1990s, it was only used to make prototypes or standalone objects. With the improvement in technology, 3D printing became a viable part of industrial production. 3D printing is capable of making complex objects with utmost precision that would be otherwise impossible to make with bare hands. The most common type of 3D printing is fusion deposition modeling or FDM 3D printing. Now let’s get on with the 10 advantages of 3D printing that you must know.
Advantages of 3D Printing we must know
The speed of formation
We already discussed the 3D printing technology and its brief evolution. This means that 3D printing technology can design, create, and test a part in very little time. It also allows any form of alteration to the design without hampering the production process. Before implementing 3D printing, designing a prototype would take weeks. If the manufacturer makes any change, the new design would take a few more weeks. This is a matter of time and takes a lot of revisions and finalization to get the final product. Thus, speed is one of the main benefits of 3D printing.
Cost-Effective Process
Traditional production processes like CNC machining and injection molding consists of various expensive parts and requires a team of experienced laborers to operate the machines. Whereas for 3D printing, it just requires one or two machines depending on the parts. The waste cost is also pretty low. As 3d printing involves molding material from the base so, wastage of material is very low. In the case of traditional molding, you have to carve out the parts of solid blocks so the wastage is very high.
Diverse Functionality
A single 3D printing machine is capable of creating various types of designs. So, the manufacturers need to invest in one machine to get all the production parts manufactured. Software controls the entire printing process. As long as you can feed the design to the software, the machine will be able to produce the material with the utmost precision. The most valuable advantage of 3D printing is that it doesn’t limit anyone based on their experience.
3D printing benefits to business
The competition in the industrial segment is so high that you have no option to waste time. 3D printing allows you to come up with designs and create them in a very short period. Thus, a demo material is available for display to the investors and clients. This allows them to visualize the prospect of your business and does not need to rely on any sort of imagination. This saves unnecessary expenditure by detecting the fault before the large-scale production. This is one of the major advantages of 3D printing.
Variable designing and proper product testing
As we have already discussed, seeing a product on the screen cannot be compared to holding it. Holding a product in hand allows the manufacturer to test it for flaws. The maker can modify this in the CAD design before starting the large-scale production. 3D printing completes all these steps in just a few hours. Thus, it saves a lot of production cost.
Quality: One of the prime advantages of 3D Printing
Traditional printing involved humans to mold the parts. And, no matter how skilled the person might be, human hands are prone to errors. So, production and prototyping wouldn’t be perfect. But with 3D printing, there is no scope of error as the software controls the entire process. 3D printing assures precise manufacture of products with enhanced quality.
Consistency of Service
As we discussed quality, the same rule is applicable for consistency. The traditional manufacturer might produce a batch of products whose quality isn’t up to the mark when compared to other batches. The traditional method involves human effort so the consistency isn’t quite up to the mark. 3D printing is a machine operated process where the software controls everything. So, there is no scope of compromise and all the products will be of the same quality throughout the year. This safety concludes to be one of the main advantages of 3D printing.
3D printing offers risk reduction
Traditional manufacturing involves a lot of risks as the makers never knew the end product. 3D printing has eliminated all these risks. This allows the makers to create a prototype, check it for errors, rectify it, and then start the mass production. Thus, the makers are immensely confident about their end products and can fully display their potential in the industrial sector.
Better accessibility of services
Traditional manufacturing requires a lot of setups. It requires highly expensive machines, trained labor, and a lot of time to complete the manufacturing process. On the other hand, 3D printing doesn’t bother about so many complications. It just wants you to get a machine, design a CAD file and you are good to go. This makes this process much more accessible to people who don’t have the money and experience for traditional manufacturing.
Sustainability of products
One of the major advantages of 3D Printing is that it requires very few products from outside. Manufacturers don’t require maintaining energy-efficient factories to use 3D printing. This is because 3D printing uses menial energy for operation. Moreover, 3D printing doesn’t hamper the environment by any means. For instance, you can recycle most of the parts of a 3D printer and the products manufactured by it.
So, it is quite justified to implement 3D printing in the industrial sector to the utmost level. It has all the features to lift a business from scratch and make it one of the pillars in the production field. Even the smallest of start-ups are starting to use 3D printing. Thus, all these advantages of 3D Printing are quite visible to all manufacturers.