March 2021

30 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk March 2021 Production Engineering SPECIAL FOCUS O f course, even before COVID, many companies had embraced the benefits of AM, taking advantage of opportunities around localised production, digital inventories and on-demand manufacturing. However, as the business case for AM continues to stack up, and more and more companies begin to look at how they can scale-up production, it is becoming clear that it is high time to address the elephant in the room – the hugely inefficient post-processing phase. Think about it: 3D printing is a highly automated process, right up until the point when the printed part leaves the machine. After that, everything else, from picking and sorting to packing, has to be done manually. That AM: A serious alternative to existing production There’s no question that 2020 proved to be a banner year for 3D printing / additive manufacturing (AM). Amidst the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the technology firmly cemented its position as a serious alternative to existing production methods. Carlos Zwikker* reports. typically means that companies must employ a team of people to painstakingly identify and pick each part as it leaves the printer, then physically transport it to the next post-processing station – and possibly several more after that – before ultimately bringing everything back together to bag and send to the customer. That is an incredibly labour-intensive, costly and inefficient model that leaves processes hugely vulnerable to human error. To try to offset increasing labour costs, we’ve seen some companies outsource production to lower wage countries. However, that completely defeats many of the advantages of using AM. The fact is, if we want to harness the benefits of AM, such as localised on-demand production, reduced carbon footprint, and small batch production, we have to find ways to automate post-processing – and quickly. From a commercial perspective, our benchmark needs to be existing traditional manufacturing technologies. Take injection moulding, for example. It is a mature, fully-automated technology – attributes that make it very efficient. While we don’t necessarily need to compete directly with injection moulding – and we’re definitely never going to replace it – as an industry we need to be competitive from a price-per-part and lead-time perspective. Adopting a new mindset A question we often hear asked is why companies are only thinking about post- processing now, especially those that have been using AM for years. The answer is that despite recent advances in the use of 3D printing, it is still a relatively immature industry. Most AM production environments have grown slowly over time, in response to specific challenges or opportunities. Companies have focused on the technology, slowly adding new printers and expanding their use of materials as required, rather than thinking about the production process or workflow. It is only now that AM has proven itself as a viable and useful technology and companies are looking to scale-up their operations that the post- production stage has come under greater scrutiny. The other reason very few companies have explored opportunities to automate AM post- processing is that, quite simply, the technology has not existed to enable them to do so. It is only with recent advances in machine learning and post-processing hardware and software that full automation of AM post-processing is finally achievable. New opportunities bring new challenges Another question we are often asked is one that applies not just to post-processing solutions, but to any type of ‘add on’ system, and that is, ‘will it work with my existing systems?’ As the AM ecosystem continues to expand and become