3D & 4D Printing Will Grow in 2015: Industries and Applications

3D printing, 4D printing, and various types of additive manufacturing (AM) will get even bigger in 2015. We're not talking about consumer use, which gets most of the attention, but won't have much actual impact on manufacturing. We're talking about processes and technologies that will affect how design engineers design products and how manufacturing engineers make them. There will be a lot more actual manufacturing using these technologies, as well as prototyping, in more industries. For now, the biggest are still aerospace and medical, while automotive and architecture continue to grow.

Aerospace

Aerospace has profited hugely from 3D printing and AM. Its long product cycles and high customization/low volume mix mean that AM technologies can nearly always save a project time and money, nearly always in prototyping, but often also in making end production parts. GE Aviation's LEAP (Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion) Turbofan jet engine is a poster child example. Among the metal components that will be 3D printed for the LEAP engine in GE's Auburn, Ala. plant, the one that's probably been talked about most is the fuel nozzle. The expected number of parts produced there will rise to 40,000 per year by 2020, since almost 20 3D-printed fuel nozzles will be produced for each LEAP engine. The nozzles and some other metal LEAP engine parts will be built using direct metal laser melting (DMLM) techniques developed internally, which GE already uses for some existing engine components.

GE says the nozzles will be five times as durable as those used in previous engine models, partly because they'll be made in one piece instead of 20 different cast pieces. That's probably the biggest value to aerospace, aside from shortened production times, of AM and 3D printing: the combination of design freedom and layer-by-layer fabrication that makes possible fewer and more durable parts, enabling less weight and in turn, faster production times. More durable extends to space-worthy rad-hard satellite parts and rocket engine parts. European and US teams have 3D printed space-worthy support structures for fully functioning satellite antenna supports that will operate while exposed to outer space's harsh temperatures and radiation. The US team specifically mentions significant cost and time savings, as well as the ability to build complex geometric parts with multiple design features, internal structures, and tight dimensional tolerances as their reasons for going with 3D printing. Its array support was made by service bureau RedEye, a Stratasys subsidiary. The European team's finished part, made with EOS' direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), weighs only half as much as the previous one made with traditional methods and has better rigidity.

After working with 3D printing for almost three years to perfect the technology for flight hardware, SpaceX 3D printed and successfully hot-fired a SuperDraco rocket engine chamber using direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), for use in the crewed version of the next-generation Dragon Version 2 spacecraft. It's an advanced version of the current Draco engine used in SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, and was designed and built entirely in-house. Using 3D printing reduced lead time by an order of magnitude compared to traditional machining: from first concept to first hot-fire test took slightly more than three months.

Medical

Medical devices, implants, and various types of patient-specific devices such as custom surgical guides are often cited as benefiting from the advantages of 3D printing, since one of its biggest appeals is the ability to make individually customized products. This is so-called "mass customization": printing zillions of one-off items for zillions of individual patients. Each one is customized, but large quantities can be manufactured at once, a characteristic of many medical devices. An analogy in sports equipment is customized shoes and running shoe spike plates.

Companies making implants have especially benefited from 3D printing. The Within Medical service, for example, combines EOS' direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) with London-based Within Technologies' software and contract manufacturer C&A Tool. The service lets engineers and orthopedic surgeons design and 3D print highly accurate, patient-specific, orthopedic medical implants, without owning an expensive high-end, 3D printer. Another service organized somewhat differently is 3D Systems' cloud-based, secure Bespoke Modeling. It lets medical professionals like surgeons and dentists create and 3D print sophisticated, full-color, 3D anatomical models from CT scans, MRI scans, or any Digital Imaging and Communications (DICOM) data, as well as view 2D and 3D data, and share and edit files.

4D printing for medical applications is not as far off as you might think. Some industry analysts are saying that one of the first industries to use 4D printing in a concrete, useful way will be medical device makers, especially those making implants. Implant prototypes made with 4D printing could appear as early as the end of this year for devices that change their structure in the body depending on the biochemistries or cells they encounter. 4D-printed devices could also be self-repairing, self-correcting, and self-disassembling.