It’s now possible to manufacture toilets, hip replacement parts and pens from a single room. The concept is called three-dimensional printing and it may revolutionize manufacturing processes this century. Today, 3-D printers are expensive to purchase and their main application is in the commercial realm.

During the past decade there have been several high-profile issues that have surfaced regarding manufacturing and labor concerns. Before the recession, General Motors was accused in a New York Times article of paying its United Auto-Worker employees $70 per hour including health care and pension benefits.

These high labor rates could be alleviated once 3-D printing is fully integrated into the auto industry.

Apple has had its share of problems at its manufacturing plants in China. The behemoth factories house miles of assembly lines and employ hundreds of thousands of people. Three-dimensional printing has the potential to minimize employee risk and revolutionize the process needed to manufacture complex devices.

These printers vary in size, from just a square foot to bigger than a factory floor. These printers generate objects through a manufacturing technique called additive manufacturing.

This means that once the blueprint of an object is ready to be printed, accurate sensors dispense a heated liquid that rapidly hardens. This process takes place repetitively and in layers until the entire blueprint becomes a tangible object.

The application of 3-D printed objects is expanding rapidly as printing accuracy and technology improves. In the health care arena, hearing aid and brace companies are using 3-D printers to generate their products. Whether the product needs to be manufactured out of plastic or metal, 3-D printers are able to switch between materials in order to ensure a well-made final product.

In the aerospace and auto industries, 3-D printing is helping tremendously in expediting the manufacturing of these complex machines. Fighter jet manufacturer Lockheed Martin is currently securing a deal to delegate 3-D aeronautical part printing to Ferra Engineering, a 3-D printing company.

The application for 3-D printers spans retail, health care, commercial and governmental industries. This new printing technology is expected to jumpstart an entire industry of its own. Just this year, 3-D printing is valued globally at 1.7 billion and by 2015 it is expected to grow to 3.7 billion.

As this revolutionary technology becomes more affordable and available to the public, there are many risks associated with 3-D printing. Defense Distributed, a specialized publishing nonprofit charitable organization, has made available free 3-D printable blueprints for firearms.

This dilemma has put a dark cloud over the industry because there seems to be a future legislative battle over publishing 3-D objects in the public domain on the Internet.

Three-dimensional printing has the power to change the way products come to market and the way they are modeled during the research and development stage. As this technology becomes more widely used, large-scale factories may be rethought and supply chains redrawn.

If a student were to buy a sneaker from a website, it could easily be customized because the manufacturing process would only consist of a single print from a 3-D printer.

Today, the 3-D printer is far from a sexy device. It is fairly technical looking and hardly resembles any commercially made consumer gadget, but the effect of this device is sure to transform our society in the next decade.

Jared Rosen is a sophomore advertising and marketing management major. His column appears weekly. He can be contacted at [email protected] or followed on Twitter at @jaredmarc14.

 

Published on November 6, 2012 at 2:45 am