Manufacturers today face more pressures than ever before to produce innovative products at quick turnovers and low costs, in order to raise margins. While these problems have no easy solution, one device may help eliminate some of the stresses attached with such manufacturing concerns.
Especially for smaller businesses, it is likely they are wasting capital on outdated production methods. Typically, any stage of a manufacturing workflow can be improved by adopting in-house Industrial 3D Printers.
In particular, there are five major areas that can be made more cost-efficient with Industrial 3D Printers. Just look at the market leaders in your industry to see how 3D Printing can help you get ahead of the competition.
Depending on your product, industry, and scale of your business will decipher the best Industrial 3D Printer for your application. The most common type of 3D printer is a Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) printer; this typical printer will fabricate your products at a fraction of the cost than a third-party service would charge.
1. Faster Product Turnarounds
In any product development cycle, there are always several iterations required before the final version of a product is delivered.
By outsourcing production or by using traditional manufacturing methods, the time required to produce that final version changes dramatically, with delivery, shipping, material availability, and lead times all significant costly factors.
Instead, in-house Industrial 3D Printers shortens prototyping times into a matter of hours, not weeks! Allowing inventions to get to market quickly and keep up with any necessary product changes. 3D printed designs are accurate and inexpensive to share with clients so they can validate the final product faster.
Rapid prototyping allows businesses to be more confident in their concept before investing in expensive mass-scale production with more costly materials.
2. Tooling is Printed In-House
Durable tooling – including jigs, fixtures, and gauges – is a critical aspect of any manufacturing process. Although, these manufacturing aids for traditional machinery are highly customised and expensive to produce, resulting in additional costs and longer lead times.
While Industrial 3D Printers also requires manufacturing tools, recent technology advances have drastically reduced durable tooling cost while accelerating processing times. Manufacturers now have a viable technology to cut the cost of their expensive tooling problems!
Clients can now affordably create customised tools for specific applications within a few hours. For example, instead of one part costing $1,000 to produce with traditional manufacturing, Industrial 3D Printed components can cost as low as $10 to fabricate.
3. Lower Material Quantities
Unlike traditional manufacturing processes, which typically produces a lot of wasted materials, Industrial 3D Printers only use the exact number of materials which is required for a product, as layer-by-layer Printing is more resource-efficient. Reducing the amount of materials required in a production process and obviously converts into pretty sizeable savings.
In addition, some industries like aerospace pay extra to produce lighter weight final products, because with traditional manufacturing, removing material weight is more expensive as additional work is involved like cutting and drilling etc.
Instead, with Industrial 3D Printing, there are no extra costs to produce a lighter product. In fact, the lighter the materials, the cheaper and faster the manufacturing process.
4. More Design Possibilities, Expanding the Audience
Industrial 3D Printing allows businesses to expand the shapes and geometries they can produce, which would be impossible to achieve with any traditional manufacturing process. Overall, expanding a business's product creativity and forward-thinking whilst saving money.
A common example demonstrating the flexibility of 3D Printing designs is part consolidation, unlike conventional manufacturing, which requires several parts to be manufactured and then assembled together to produce the final product. Additive manufacturing allows for whole part printing, where even parts made of several complex components may be printed already enact.
Part consolidation methods used in this manner enable producers to gain considerable cost savings, including labour costs involved with assembly work, decreased manufacturing costs – as less or no extra parts must be procured and stored – and low inventory costs.
5. Less Manpower
Operating Industrial 3D Printer machines requires less labour than conventional production facilities. In reality, the majority of advanced 3D technologies are 100% computer-controlled. The number of staff required to operate or maintain a Industrial 3D Printer is often much lower; most printers are self-sufficient and can be run remotely.
While owners can take this advantage to reduce their employees and reduce salary costs, instead, staff can be put to better use elsewhere in a business, like expanding the brands reach or coming up with more products to bring to market.
Sourcing Commercial 3D Printers and 3D Printing Materials at Emona
Hence the cost-effective benefits of Industrial 3D Print can decrease costs at all stage of the production process. Be an early adopter of commercial 3D Printing with a state-of-the-art Industrial 3D Printer and high-quality 3D printing materials from Emona Instruments.
The potential of 3D Printing is still in its infancy; in the coming years, almost all industries and companies will use the technology to enhance their manufacturing and supply chains. Emona Instruments caters for a range of budgets, functions and technologies, suitable for R&D professionals, production lines or the classroom.
From Markforged Carbon Fibre Composite and Metal 3D Printers printing in stainless steel, tool steel, copper and Inconel, through to Formlabs SLA 3D Printers printing resin, the Emona team are ready to help with expert advice and benchmark sample part printing. Contact the Emona team for more information or technical support on (02) 9519 3933, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.emona.com.au/markforged.