3D printing - opportunity & threat

Keeping you up to date with context, have a look at what is being achieved with 3D printing - it is not enough to simply bring it into an essay; you must give a contextualised explanation that demonstrates an understanding of opportunities and threats, so take a look at this article, and while you are at it, why not check out the article on super smart trains:

http://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/this-tiny-3d-printed-jet-engine-could-have-big-promise/77490

This Tiny 3D Printed Jet Engine Could Have Big Promise

By Mike Keller

Call it the little engine that could. Last year, a team of engineers at GE Aviation’s Additive Technology Center built an almost entirely 3D printed miniature jet engine — a backpack-size powerhouse that hits 33,000 rotations per minute. While this little guy — it measures 1 foot, 8 inches — isn’t going to propel a commercial airliner anytime soon, it did demonstrate that a powerful, functioning engine built mainly from 3D printed parts isn’t a flight of fancy so much as the future of flight.

Additive manufacturing is hardly new to aviation. Parts of full-size aircrafts already incorporate 3D printed parts. CFM’s LEAP engine — a best-seller since it entered into service last year — has 3D printed fuel nozzles. In April, Reuters reported that Boeing would start using 3D printed parts for structural components of its 787 Dreamliner. Though petite, GE’s mini engine could have big implications. It represents the promise that one day, you could be sitting on a plane, and the engine keeping you in the sky will have been entirely 3D printed. 

Coolness factor aside, 3D printed jet engines are considerably lighter, and reducing the weight of an aircraft has the knock-on effect of reducing the amount of fuel needed to keep a plane in the sky — and less fuel means a more cost-effective flight, and less emissions.

Boeing estimates that by incorporating additive manufacturing in the production of up to 1,000 Dreamliners, the company could potentially reduce costs by up to $3 million per plane. Imagine the savings if the technology were rolled out on a greater scale.

Using 3D printing to manufacture parts also means less material waste, which further reduces the cost and complexity of production. For example, the process GE used to print its mini engine — direct metal laser melting, or DMLM — involves melting metal powder layer upon layer and building a part from the ground up, rather than cutting it from one large piece of material. 

Additive manufacturing also means a quicker, more custom design. GE says that 3D printing fuel nozzles for the LEAP engine allowed engineers to reduce the number of brazes and welds in the design from 25 to just five.

“You get speed because there’s less need for tooling and you go right from a model or idea to making a part,” says Matt Benvie, a spokesman for GE Aviation. “You can also get geometries that just can’t be made any other way.”

There are still limits to what 3D printing can achieve, of course. The new technology is not yet as fast nor as cheap as hoped; it took GE years to build a small, simple prototype. The materials needed for 3D printing can sometimes be too expensive for mass production. And we’re not yet in a place where 3D printed parts are coming out perfect — post-processing work is often required.

Still, for aircraft manufacturers, the benefits of eventually 3D printing most, if not all, aircraft parts are too great not to pursue. Airbus has gone so far as to say the technology could reduce both raw material and energy used in production by 90 percent; it has also been reported that 3D printing all the possible components of an A350 would reduce the weight of the aircraft by more than a ton. For a feel of just how much fuel that would save, consider that back in 2014, Virgin Atlantic slimmed the design of its meal trays to trim 300 pounds of weight per flight — enough to save millions of dollars on fuel (not to mention reducing carbon emissions).

Even more interesting, it could be that size does matter. In December, Pune, India–based market research company ReportsnReports said miniaturizing aircraft components through 3D printing would be key to improving fuel efficiency and operating costs in years to come. Perhaps the future is all about thinking small.

How innovation is achieved

I think the bit to take away from this article is that a) we are good at developing ideas, and b) it takes time to apply them. The idea here, which can be used in an essay (if you are writing about competitiveness) is that manufacturing today with sensors embedded in products to relay data about performance and malfunctions will have a significant (creeping) efficiency effect - as per the two highlighted paragraphs. This is from ozy.com






Take a drive about four hours north of London — atop an abandoned open pit mine — and you’ll discover the little-known place where some of the world’s biggest companies come to tinker with tech that may shape the future of industrial manufacturing. Here, at the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, or AMRC, there’s a massive machine shop and a nuclear facility, not to mention an aircraft test center, a prototyping space complete with 3-D printers and laser cutters, as well as Europe’s biggest electron beam welder.


Companies including Boeing and General Electric (GE) have all experimented here in a bid to revolutionize their manufacturing processes, and it’s where they hope their next great inventions may come to life. “The AMRC started as the playpen for companies to throw challenges at and say, ‘Hey, look, is there an easier, better, cheaper way of doing this that’s more environmentally friendly?’” says Colin Sirett, AMRC’s CEO.


And there certainly is a lot to play with today. Innovations such as cloud computing, advanced robotics, the Internet of Things, wearable technology and 3-D printing are all revolutionizing the manufacturing process in profound ways. These technologies are already able to ramp up production, though some experts expect these efficiencies to skyrocket in the near future as this technology matures — while reducing costs by as much as 40 percent, Sirett estimates. All told, American manufacturers plan to nearly double their investment in digital technologies, from roughly 2.6 percent of annual revenue today to nearly 5 percent over the next five years, for a total estimated spend of $350 billion, according to a PwC survey.

Today, machines can be fitted with sensors that track the performance of each individual part in real time, and they can even predict when an issue might take place.

The transition from traditional manufacturing to what’s often referred to as next-generation manufacturing or industry 4.0 has been largely enabled by the big data revolution. Today, seemingly every aspect of the manufacturing process — from designing prototypes to final deliveries — can be tracked digitally. In fact, Industrial IP predicts that 27 percent of the expected $14.4 trillion that will result from the Internet of Things will occur in the manufacturing sector by 2022, with a predicted total value of $3.88 trillion.


Previously, manufacturers had to wait until a product came off the assembly line with a defect to notice something might be wrong, and then invest time and energy into exploring and fixing the problem, with losses accumulating with every second of downtime. But today, machines can be fitted with sensors that track the performance of each individual part in real time, and they can even predict when an issue might take place, allowing manufacturers to correct it before any defects occur. This type of high-tech, predictive forecasting “in its nature is very significant in the manufacturing environment,” says Bob McCutcheon, the U.S. industrial products industry leader for PwC.


Meanwhile, within industrial plants, some experts see 3-D printing and additive manufacturing evolving beyond just building replacement spare parts. The technology, McCutcheon says, “can completely change not just how we make things, but how we design products in ways that could have never even been envisioned or designed with traditional manufacturing methodologies.” At this point, roughly two-thirds of manufacturers surveyed by PwC are adopting the tech in some way.

Each of these technological developments may seem exciting on its own — at least to industrial geeks who feel at home on a manufacturing floor — but it’s their powerful combination that will bring about the most significant and productive evolutions in manufacturing. Just imagine a wind turbine in a remote location that’s days away from a mechanical failure. Sensors in the machinery could identify this potential problem and deploy a service technician to the site. That technician could then quickly 3-D-print a replacement part and service the equipment as other technicians supervise via video streaming through the technician’s smart glasses.


While the potential for this kind of a reality exists, there are a number of significant hurdles that have yet to be overcome. Most — upward of 90 percent — of machine tools on shop floors don’t have all these fancy sensors on them, says Dean Bartles, the executive director of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute in Chicago. And replacing that existing manufacturing equipment with “smart” machines will take a major investment by industry players — one which many manufacturers can’t yet afford. Then there’s the issue of Internet security, which becomes more prominent as more machines are connected and controlled through the Internet.


Still, the combination of connected devices, the Internet of Things, 3-D printing and big data has already begun to revolutionize the manufacturing process. McCutcheon likens it to the invention of the iPhone, explaining that once the technology became available, developers were able to build incredibly innovative apps that were hard to imagine before Apple’s App Store ever opened its virtual doors. “We’ve got the technology,” he says. “Now step back and watch all the innovation that takes place.”