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Originally posted by bluesamurai:
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’Just in time’ global supply is becoming obsolete for large metal parts ie, car& aircraft parts due to a number of pressing factors. Any company that has thousands of spare parts cannot successfully function due to long delivery problems and crippling ship & aircraft freight cost, Several years ago I studied the advent of additive manufacturing but it was a bit early to be adopted on a large scale due to the need for plentiful supply of metal powders ,especially titanium dioxide.Now all the the pieces have fallen into line with ASM the missing link in the equation. Thinking ahead I could envisage industrial 3D printers in all divisions of say a large automotive chain. There would be no need of huge quantities of parts held in massive warehouses . As a customer request a certain part all that is needed is the appropriate barcode. the part could be manufactured on site available within days, The strength and quality of these parts can be easily shown by the fact Rolls Royce build their impeller fans for large jets in this way at a much reduced cost. Up until now only large corporations could enjoy this technology but now with ASM’s metal powders it can be made available to most reasonable sized companies that rely on supplying parts, My thoughts have imagined the original photocopy business that grew from a small beginning the rest is history now . Consider the demand for metal powders especially titanium dioxide from quantities of 3D printers requiring powders 24/7 just as photocopies need ink now . This will take time to become embedded into industry but I think it will happen IMO.
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Agree totally: years ago i too bought a printer to avoid the uncertain timing and inconvenience of getting my materials (A4 sized paper documents) printed at the cooy shop. My in-house machines fulfilled as and when needed, and I bought a backup printer and spare toners for redundancy. 3D metal printing probably will / should go the same way, with mass production and very complex (nano tolerance / precise / alloys) jobs still done off-site by specialists.
(20min delay)