Even in an era where we are surrounded by innovations, manufacturing many of the things we take for granted — electronics, automobiles, airplanes — still requires, and wastes, a tremendous amount of time, energy and money. Teams of designers and engineers must create parts and products that can actually be manufactured with existing technologies.
When it comes to making parts out of metal, most manufacturers still start with a billet, rod or plate. Skilled workers take these materials and use subtractive machine tools to mill, drill, and otherwise sculpt unnecessary material away, until the final part is shaped. Finally, all of these metal pieces must be shipped around the world and assembled into final products. This metal manufacturing ecosystem is full of challenges and compromises.
Binder Jet 3D Printing Metal for Manufacturing
That’s because every traditional manufacturing technology has limitations in the geometry of parts it can produce, as well as a minimum amount of time and cost it takes to make them. Oftentimes, these factors require engineers to compromise on their designs and craft many parts separately, so they can be assembled together.
This is done simply because a design cannot be produced as a single unit, or fast enough, with traditional approaches. This longstanding approach has serious downsides. For starters, subtractive processes create enormous amounts of waste that must be recycled or put into a landfill. In the aerospace industry alone, it is widely accepted that more than 95% of the material purchased to create a metal component is cut, shaved and ground away to create the final part. It’s a shocking reality that has become far too easily accepted over the years: less than 5% of the metal bought to make an aircraft is actually used in the final product.
Certainly, most manufacturers work to collect and recycle as much of this waste as they can, but even the best systems return just pennies on the dollar for this so-called “metal swarf.” With few better alternatives in sight, this inefficiency has long plagued the metal parts industry. The most unfortunate part of this traditional approach, however, is how it holds everyone back.
Designers, engineers, manufacturers, and really society, deals with these product limitations every day. This old way of doing things has been preventing our world from delivering more innovative and sustainable designs and products — and creating unnecessary waste along the way.
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