What is 3D Printing (Additive Manufacturing?

(This answer is taken from my book ‘Innovate the Next: Success Frameworks to Innovating Products in Any Revolution’). The predecessor of 3D printing is mould injection.

With the latter, a product is usually produced in one-half components. Liquid material — e.g. plastic or steel is injected into a mould to make one-half of the desired component. The other half of the component is made using the same method.

The one-half components are cooled off to dry, then are fused with other components (that went into the same moulding and drying process) to make a complete product.

The making of a mould takes a day or more. Then production also takes a day or more.

For example, this is how a phone shell is made. One half is made on one mould, and the other on another. Then they are glued or screwed together to make a whole.

Then additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, came along.

3D printing manufactures products by making components one at a time to make up all the different parts of a product.

Mould injection works best for mass production.

The concept of 3D printing is traced back to 1950 in Raymond F. Jones story called, ‘Tools of the Trade’,’, published in the November 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. He referred to it as a ‘molecular spray.’

The first patented ‘sort of ‘3D printer called a Liquid Metal Recorder was made by Johannes F Gottwald in 1971.

3D technology has been used more for prototyping over the years.

Additive manufacturing can make complete components in 3D. It can make a complete phone shell. It leaves break-off points for you to divide it into two halves. It dries the component or product as it makes it.

This takes hours. The benefit of 3D printing, however, is that prototypes can be made inexpensively within a day, and on a desk in an office.

Although 3D does not produce at mass speed like a factory which uses moulds, any person can now make and sell products that in the past needed to be made in moulding and manufacturing factories.

If the orders pile up, then they can get subcontracted to a mass production factory. The benefit here is that even moulds can be made on 3D printers, and it is cheaper.

You can print your own moulds and take them to the factory. Alternatively you can produce a few products through moulds you made by mould injecting. It is also cheaper.

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Click here for the explanations of the other components of the 4IR (5G, Quantum Computing, Biotechnology, Autonomous Vehicles, 3D Printing, Decentralised Consensus, Iot, Nanotechnology, AI And Robotics).

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