MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IS NOW AT THE forefront in embracing and implementing disruptive technologies. 3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing is among the ones that is fast catching up in India.To understand the technology, the current state of usage, the challenges and its potential, Manufacturing Today organised a webinar in partnership with Markforged.
The luminaries in the panel were Surendra M Vaidya, Executive Vice President and Business Head, Godrej Aerospace; Vikash Mishra, Chairman, Raphe mPhibr Pvt. Ltd., Vilas Pujari, CIO, ACG Worldwide; Shankar Ghosh, GM-Plant Engineering, RSB Group; Anuj Budhiraja, Country Manager-India, Markforged. The event on ‘how 3D printing is disrupting manufacturing,’ was moderated by Neeraj Singh, Director, KPMG. The panel discussion was followed by a presentation by Anthony Rosengren, Application Engineer, Markforged. Speaking about 3D printing before he could bring in the panellists, Singh talked about the key advantages of 3D printing, the questions that it raised about its true potential in the country and the transformation that it will bring about in the businesses.
“Rapid and inexpensively done prototyping, drastic reduction in lead time, rapid just-in-time manufacturing and rapid innovation the way the industry has never seen before, are some of the key advantages of 3D printing,” said Singh who has led large global teams for digitisation and technology implementation himself.
With this brief introduction, Singh invited Vaidya to open the discussion. Vaidya, with a rich experience in the aerospace industry behind him, began by explaining the nature of the industry. He said exotic titanium, aluminium and nickel-based alloys go into the making of an aeroplane where the difficult choices have to be made between reducing metal and other materials to make the plane lighter and adding materials to give it strength. According to Vaidya, by the very nature of the industry and increasingly stringent regulations, safety of the fliers is paramount and the industry cannot have companies aggregating parts from varied sources.
You need to have your own design, your own technology which has to be very dearly protected, alluding to the obvious difficulty in this if they are shared around with 3D printers. “Typically, through the machining route of sourcing to material manufacturing, it takes a lead time of 6-8 months and 10-15 revisions with the regulators before any aircraft or engine design is certified for air-worthiness.
With 3D printing, this lead time comes down to just 6-8 days; a huge advantage,” he said. Pujari, a seasoned C-Suite IT professional in the manufacturing domain, brought in the perspective of the pharma industry into the discussion. According to him, from the need perspective, from the demand perspective, from the problem-solving perspective; 3D printing technology definitely has everything going for it. “However, from the ease-of-implementation point of view, particularly in the pharma industry, there are a great number of challenges ahead,” he said.
“Pharma industry is IP (intellectual property) protected” he said, suggesting to the patents in the industry that help pharmaceutical companies to recover their investments and at the same time protect them from infringement claims. On asking what kinds of requirements, queries, concerns or misconceptions generally companies come up with when they seek advice from him, Bhudiraja, pointed out to a widely prevalent misconception about the technology among the manufacturers who do actual production on the shop floor.
“It is a general impression that 3D printing technology is meant for design and development, it is meant for product development; for the prototyping; not for manufacturing.” They wonder if it is even possible to replace metal with plastic in the factory shop floor. They are curious if the 3D model tools can bear drops, which is common on the shop floor, or how many drops can it withstand. Budhiraja reminded that as back as in 2013, “Markforged had introduced a unique composite, the continuous fibre reinforcement which provides strength which is multiple times that of aluminium. Composite for 3D printing is made of Carbon fiber, fiberglass and Kevlar which gives a lot more than traditional material used in terms of withstanding high temperature, high stress and high load requirements.”
Many manufacturers have already started using them especially for making spare parts or for low volume production, pointed Budhiraja. The Markforged Country Manager pointed out that in terms of new design and new applications, 3D al-lows them to focus more on the application part rather than thinking of restrains put by the limits of traditional manufacturing or the CNC machines. Addressing the misconceptions, the concerns and the applicability of the technology, Budhiraja expressed his confidence in the technology growing multi-fold in the next five years in India. Ghosh, with an expertise that includes procurement and commissioning of state-of-the-art CNC machines as also erection and commissioning of infrastructure projects start to finish, was asked to share his thoughts on usage and advantages of 3D printing. He laid out,
“We can do complicated casting through 3D printing technology wherein 8-9 different casting can be integrated in to a single mould. That is the biggest advantage of the 3D printing. Rapid prototyping, production of single item inexpensively, just-in-time manufacturing, reduction in lead time, reduction in overheads of investment in inventory, mass production of unique products and mass customisation are some of the other advantages of 3D printing technology.” Recounting his journey as an entrepreneur, Mishra said, “The first equipment that I purchased when I started this company was a 3D printer.” Even at that time, he anticipated the role 3D printing technology would play in the future. The company he founded manufactures combat drones which is not in any way less in aerodynamics than an aircraft. Today, a lot of the parts that are being used in his drones are made using 3D technology.
“These parts serve many purpose. We simulate the physics; we understand the requirements of a UAV in terms of aerospace and in terms of physics inside it; and then we design the components accordingly. With the fleet of 3D printers I have, I get immense ability in terms of designing and then manufacture it exactly as per requirement,” said Mishra. He however flagged the limitations to 3D printers and the need for more innovations within the country to address them. The panel discussion continued in the second round with further inputs from the panellists.
Vaidya elaborated on the advantages of 3D printing for low-volume production and mass customisation of industrial-grade parts. Pujari advised on the ways to leverage on additive manufacturing networks to ramp up production amid supply chain disruption. Integration of additive manufacturing into the existing digital space was the topic Budhiraja touched upon.
On the other hand, Ghosh stayed on the subject of a paradigm shift in design, manufacturing and distribution brought about by additive manufacturing. Investments required and returns expected was the topic thrown open to Mishra, an entrepreneur himself. Singh lucidly summarised the discussions by the panellists and invited Hafeez Shaikh, Business Head, Manufacturing Today, to throw open the session to questions from the attendees. Thanking the panel, Shaikh invited Rosengren for the presentation following which questions were taken from the attendees and replied to.
Rosengren, in his presentation, dived straight in to the subject enumerating the advantages of 3D printing with examples of actual usage. With above 12,000 printers in over 73 countries and 10 million parts, Markfoged Application Engineer wouldn’t be short of examples to enumerate. He spoke about a few of them. He talked of specific applications like the End-Of- Arm (EOA) grippers. “The reason why all of them are 3D printed is because 3D printing makes it possible to be produced at a reduced cost, which means more iteration and larger and better production designs in the end,” he explained. He elaborated with an example of how Markforged help Wartsila, Sweden to create the world’s first 3D printed CE-certified lifting tool. This helped the company to speed up the introduction of new products with faster, cheaper and safer tool creation. Siemens Machining Softjaw was another example of a substantial time-saving 3D printed tool he talked about.
The event concluded on a high note with all the panellists agreed that 3D Printing is not only here to stay but also expected see massive growth in demand as more and manufacturers start discovering its benefits.