While many of us wait for long-delayed shipments, as retailers and manufacturers can’t get cargo ships or truckloads of crucial parts, some companies apply the virtual magic of 3-D printing to save millions of dollars, even as container ships languish off the coast.
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9 replies on “Inventory Shortages Cost Million$: Can 3-D Printing Keep Us Moving When Cargo Ships Can’t?”
One of the issues with 3-D printing or replicator technology is what I call “time-tation”. There’s a great temptation to believe that once you have the technology to replicate anything, you will have the time and resources to replicate everything.
Watching Steve try to keep a straight face while Bill was describing building his Turbo Encabulator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag) was priceless!
I am in the 3D printing industry. It’s not magic but it has real advantages over traditional manufacturing especially in 3 areas: parts that benefit from complex internal structures to minimize weight while keeping strength, low volume runs of parts that are difficult to machine, medium to large volume runs of parts where slight customization is needed for each part.
For production at scale, molds and assembly lines just make more sense. We are getting a much better feel for where 3D printing can outperform traditional manufacturing.
Supply chain shortages can be a benefit for us because our raw materials kept on hand can me made into anything. We can stop making item “a” and start making item “b” in an instant (an instant when compared to traditional manufacturing.)
Can’t wait for businesses to switch to 3D printing of back stock and the fit it will cause the tax and spend party when it comes to inventor tax time. Same goes tor insurance when they don’t need to have a few hundred copies of the same item in stock at all times dropping to a dozen or less at any given time.
Ever stop to think that technology enslaves people rather than advances them?
Well this was always the promise of “Desktop Manufacturing” that we used to read about 40 yrs ago in long-gone publications like High Technology and Omni. About 30 yrs ago I sat in a Mechanical Engineering class and listened to the Prof talk about 3D printing of automobile parts at the local parts store instead of stocking parts made elsewhere. My 10 yrs experience in industry had made me skeptical, so I quipped, “Yeah,,,,by the time that happens we’ll have cars that fly and run on tap water“. Still waiting on the flying car, but I’m glad to see “the desktop” producing something much more valuable than just infantile rants.
A rather large multinational for whom I used to work actually has a facility in the UK that is solely purposed for “additive manufacturing”. The have more than a dozen, with a plan for 50, of these machines. Many machines built in both the aerospace and mining industries are very low volume. When a complex machined part is needed, and there are only a handful required, the cost to mill or turn the part is quite high. Set up time for the machines can be a shift plus machining time plus all the material removed is waste. AM can be a big savings in both time and money for these low quantity parts. And there are a lot of this type of part in the world. Yes, they are spread out all over the world, but the total volume of parts and $$ is very high.
Within 5 years this type of parts manufacturing will grow exponentially as engineers learn how to design parts to be built in layers rather than having material taken away. Think about something simple that is made by removing material and build it in your head by adding material in thin layers. It is the type of paradigm shift that needs new people who haven’t learned the old way.
Keeping this more serious post separate from my Star Trek one. Of course, you have to have the raw materials on hand for the printer. Plastic, metal, wood, depending on what is being printed, and stem cells and nutrients for the organ production. Now back to a bit snarky. You’d need another printer to print the parts that break on the printer. It’s turtles all the way down! Really, the feed, more than one printer and parts for said printer should be kept on hand, just in case. Otherwise, great idea.
Next step (someday, maybe). Star Trek type replicators. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”