3D Printing

When I think of the foundation of the American dream, it all comes back to manufacturing. The real expansion of the U.S. happened during and immediately following World War II. What was the driving force behind that rapid expansion? Manufacturing. Because most of the rest of the developed world was in shambles after the war, the U.S. had a major advantage in manufacturing. If you needed something built you didn't have a choice but to have it built in the U.S.

 As I stated in my previous blog, a major area of employment for industrial engineers is manufacturing. Manufacturing is the process of taking raw materials and turning them in to finished products. Most processes for machining, with current technology, are subtractive in nature. Subtractive processes remove material from a larger starting block to form the desired product. Some forms of subtractive machining are cutting, milling, turning, and drilling. While subtractive machining has been the norm since the industrial revolution, it has many limitations. Machining the insides of parts becomes increasingly difficult with subtractive machining.

Another way to build things is additive machining. Additive processes are generally simpler to carry out. Building a brick wall is an additive process. Perhaps a more useful example would be the layering of plastic to form complex shapes. The limitations of additive processes are generally more related to structural stability, i.e. the overall strength. 

So what does an engineer with a complex part, and not willing to compromise on structural stability, do? Well, 3D printing may be an option. 3D printing works very similarly to your standard 2D printer. A 3D printer reads a diagram from a computer program and, just like a 2D printer, prints out the desired object. 

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering, how can you just print something out in three dimensions with no support system? 3D printing is an additive process, similar to the additive processes discussed earlier. However, 3D printing has fewer limitations than the previous forms of additive manufacturing.  Below is an example of how metal 3D printing works. 

As you can see from the above video this process takes quite a while. However, this additive process is much faster than any other processes to make a similar product. It can be reasoned then that a much simpler product can be made much faster.

This brings me back to my opening paragraph. Manufacturing made the U.S. into the world power that it is. However, with recent developments in manufacturing, that grip is starting to slip. With the rise of robotics in industry, many labor jobs simply aren’t needed anymore. Many of the jobs where labor is needed are being outsourced to countries with cheaper labor rates. This change has brought our country to a turning point, and with the help of 3D printing maybe we can become that manufacturing super power we once were.