Companies must always find ways to improve. That’s how businesses stay in the game. Improve. Innovate. Stay competitive. And with so many IT companies these days focused on rolling out the next big thing in consumer electronics land, there’s a wealth of gadgets and technologies out there most people haven’t scratched the surface of, much less seen in action. One such technology is 3D printing.
3D Printing Technology
Despite the many advances of the 3D printing technologies, the industry remains young. Though plenty of gadgets, kits and even 3D printer accessories are making their way into the market and right into the homes of growing enthusiasts. And why not? Considering the benefits the technology can potentially bring to the table, it might not be too long now before you start seeing 3D printing become the norm for a lot of manufacturing companies.
Low Cost of 3D Printing
Whether you’re a teacher, enthusiast or employee looking for a way to produce an item at low-cost, turning to 3D printing is an excellent idea. The technology allows you to come up with anything you set your mind into at an incredibly affordable rate. So long as that idea can be printed out and fed into the machine, it can happen. Want 3-D printed tchotchkes, hiking trails from your GPS tracks, asks livescience? What about heads made out of resin to approximate and maybe speculate on how possible or soon it would be for the technology to improve to the point that facial reconstructive surgery patients can start printing out their own faces through 3D bioprinters?
Greater Manufacturing Efficiency
The low cost of the technology isn’t the only thing that’s attracting people to resort to 3d printing and explore it even further. It’s the efficiency of the process. Since 3D printing uses additive technology, the amount of material the machine uses never goes above or beyond the necessary amount. That’s a big departure from traditional manufacturing methods that use substractive process that entails putting a block of material inside a printer and letting it slice through the block until the object or item emerges from the material.
In the case of 3D printing, the machine adds the material layer by layer. This, though, ensures strong adhesion for the layers together so no assembly is needed. When the printing is done, there are no scraps on the floor that need to be reheated and melted into new blocks of material in order to start another round of 3D printing.