Additive manufacturing: a creative source

As a rule, I don’t use the word “create” to describe manufacturing operations. Create means to bring something into existence from nothing. Manufactured goods, be they gears, file cabinets or baseballs, are things made from something else.

I made an exception to my rule during a 1989 visit to a moldmaking shop outside Chicago. The shop’s owner ushered me into a small, cool, dark room. Beneath a single bright light sat a Stereolithography Apparatus, the device introduced in 1986 that spawned rapid prototyping and 3-D additive manufacturing (AM). I watched—transfixed—as a laser beam moved swiftly across the surface of a vat filled with liquid photopolymer resin. Slowly, steadily, 0.015"-thick layer by 0.015"-thick layer, a solid prototype of an automobile distributor cap took form in the syrupy amber liquid.

The process, I told the shop owner, was “like witnessing creation.”

Despite the awe-inspiring nature of AM techniques, they have been utilized less the past 25 years than early proponents expected. That has begun to change the past 24 months, as awareness of AM has grown and technologies have been upgraded. Evidence of this trend includes:

• A May 2011 report on additive-manufacturing activities worldwide shows total revenues grew 24.1 percent in 2010. The report’s author, Wohlers Associates Inc., also “conservatively forecasts” that industry-wide growth will reach $3.1 billion by 2016 and $5.2 billion in 2020.
• Large corporations are eyeing AM. One is General Electric, which opened a laboratory in May devoted to researching additive techniques. The lab’s first project is researching ways to fabricate ultrasound probes.
• Existing AM technologies are being improved, including those targeting the micro realm. For example, FineLine Prototyping Inc. has developed a process called “Micro-Resolution Stereolithography.” The shop modified its equipment and, using a custom-formulated resin, produces parts with feature resolutions as fine as 30µm to 40µm. Another example is Microfabrica Inc. It recently rolled out the second generation of a hybrid technique that combines additive layering and metal deposition for batch-processing applications. Called MICA Freeform, it fabs 3-D devices with features down to 20μm.
• AM equipment makers have begun pitching their product lines to the consumer market. 3D Systems Corp., which invented the Stereolithography Apparatus, has acquired a number of companies the past 18 months that supply low-cost personal 3-D printing systems and related products. Some systems cost less than $2,000.
• Mainstream media is devoting coverage to additive manufacturing. AM-related news stories are appearing everywhere from local TV stations to national network news to Jay Leno’s Garage to The Economist.

A recent column about additive manufacturing in The Economiststated: “Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands, and thus undermines economies of scale. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did.”

That seems a tad overheated. But, clearly, AM will significantly influence manufacturing in the coming years. And the development and adoption of these technologies could prove most beneficial to a country like the U.S., which relies on innovation—the creative force—to propel its manufacturing economy. µ