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  1. #1
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    General Electric Talks About the Bright Future of 3D Printing

    General Electric is one of the large corporations which have been slowly integrating 3D printing technology into their manufacturing processes. From prototyping, to building products ready for end use, 3D printing has become a major part of their business. General Electric’s Christine Furstoss, the company’s technology director for manufacturing and materials technologies, say down with ibtimes.com for an interview. You can read the entire interview here, but I picked out some of the key remarks that Furstoss has made regarding the future of this technology.

    Question: Some analysts are skeptical of 3D printing beyond the novelty of the technology, predicting that it’ll only impact a small slice of global manufacturing. Does that concern you? Does that matter?


    Response by Furstoss: It doesn’t matter as long as we continue to have some scale at both the machine and materials level. Besides the machines and materials, there’s also the software production. So there doesn’t need to be massive scale. Even between 5 and 20 percent, and we can debate what that number is -- it could easily be 20 percent -- that’s a nice scale across the world and pretty good volume.

    So long as there’s a continuous push for a 3D-printing ecosystem, I think we’ll be fine. But I do contend that additive will touch more of the economy than just the industrial economy. I think the use of additive 3D-printing tech for things like tooling will grow at the most-rapid pace. These are parts that are a little simpler, and more forgiving on the needed material properties, because you’re using them as tools.

    A big push for us is making small batches of parts to use in test vehicles. There additive is making an impact. If you look at the number of parts that will be touched by additive, maybe prototyped or made by tools made by additive, the economic impact quickly climbs.
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    Question: What are some obstacles to widespread industrial adoption of 3D printing?


    Response by Furstoss: Let me list three things that will cause step changes in the adoption of additive 3D printing.

    One breakthrough will come when we have better closed loop control. That’s the whole issue around control systems. That’s the heart of automation, which some people view as older technology, but for me that’s the game changer.

    Everything must be combined with different sensors or inspectors looking at things that impact the final properties of the part, like how quickly a laser moves, what power it runs at, how thin that surface is, how thick you’re building each layer. That control of properties controls the parameters of the final part to such a high degree. You want to be sure that if things start to drift or get misaligned that the machine senses it and can compensate.

    It should be an interesting engineering problem, but one that can be solved. Let’s remember that we’re working with lasers and metals. It’s hard to sense, and these processes are occurring at temperatures well over 2,000 degrees. How do you make sense of these signals, and how do you do it in real time?

    Second, we need a better fix on the materials used during additive 3D printing. In the polymer world, there are very good large industrial producers like Stratasys, Ltd.'s. (NASDAQ:SSYS) 3D systems. But their material sets are very unique to their equipment.

    How do you identify and qualify such materials when you get into the metals world [not just plastics]? These materials have to flow very easily because we’re ingesting them into machines. You need flow, since you don’t want to clog things up, but in the end you must have properties that can make aircraft engines, so they have to have certain material properties.

    Companies that dedicate themselves to materials for 3D printing are just starting to emerge. The more we can learn about the final product and the materials, the more on that relationship, the better. It’s in its infancy. Companies that understand enough about metal powders, and the actual additive process, enough to tailor their material for the process, are only just emerging.

    Thirdly, the whole area of inspection. We can print shapes that are so complex and almost unbelievable, but: are all the tolerances met? How do we make sure every surface, every size, and the roughness is where we need it to be?

  2. #2
    Administrator Eddie's Avatar
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    3D Printing will be help companies like GE quite a bit in the near future. The manufacturing process won't ever be the same.

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