Articles
Kieron Salter, managing director of digital fabrication specialist KWSP
There are a lot of myths about additive manufacturing (AM). One is that it is a direct replacement for CNC machining or fabrication. But if you take out those processes and directly replace them with AM, it won’t work. Understanding how to design for manufacture is key. You need to use the unique attributes of AM to solve engineering challenges.
Another myth is that you just buy a 3D printer, put it in the corner of your office and print anything you want. But you have to understand the process. There are some significant disadvantages with AM to consider. Indeed, AM machines are constrained in their use of materials for specific processes. For example, grain structure is a weakness that we have to design around. What’s more, the speed of many of these machines needs to improve.
Think about what these tools allow us to do that we couldn’t do previously. The most talked-about application is prototyping. But what’s not so much mentioned outside aerospace and motorsport is that the technology can be used to make jigs, tooling and templates from CAD data. Soluble tooling lets you make carbon-fibre shapes and components that you couldn’t make before. It’s liberating for the designer, and in some ways the CAD software has yet to catch up with its potential.
AM can be used in any sector. But we want people to stop thinking about it as a separate ‘super-technology’, and instead to consider it as a part of digital manufacturing, which starts with CAD.
The CAD data is your digital asset – the bit you need to invest in. Everything else comes from that. AM is just one of the opportunities you can extract from your CAD data, such as portability, transferability, tooling, graphics rendering and local manufacturing. The clever bit is still in the engineering and design, not in the machine.
So, if you are considering using AM for the first time, speak to your suppliers and work with them to design for AM; otherwise, you will be disappointed.
You should also think of AM in the same way as any other machine tool, in that you need to decide if it’s better to make the part yourself or outsource. These machines will improve a lot, in terms of materials and speed, but they can be useful now if approached in the right way.
KWSP offers design, manufacturing and supply services for high-performance engineering and manufacturing companies, using its experience of speed, efficiency and precision from the motorsport sector.
For more information, go to www.kwspecialprojects.com