3D printing, also known as incremental manufacturing (additive
manufacturing), is to hit rather than process all kinds of everyday and industrial products through a printer. In fact, this technology has long been used in industry, for printing samples and so on. But because of its high cost (industrial printer prices can be as high as 1 million U.S. dollars), and in the scope of application and performance and traditional manufacturing methods are still not a small gap, has been in the avant-garde niche space such as large factories, research institutes, or a number of individuals technology enthusiasts in the silent existence. But in recent years, the rapid development of this technology, performance improved significantly, and the cost has been significantly reduced, has been out of the niche space to the mainstream market momentum of proliferation.
Industry insiders will be in 2012, 3D printers as in 1977, personal computers and web browsers in 1990, is a new market from the embryonic into the growth of the turning point. While 3D printing technology has yet to disrupt traditional manufacturing, the former is slowly stealing market share.
The digital manufacturing technology represented by 3D printing is considered by The Economist to be a key factor in triggering the third industrial revolution, "which will rewrite the way manufacturing is done, and then change the mode of operation of the industrial chain".
First of all, digital manufacturing technology will greatly reduce the number of workers directly engaged in the production of the operation, the labor force accounted for the proportion of the cost of production and then fell. In addition, the personalization, speed and low cost of digital manufacturing can be more quickly adapted to changes in local market demand, including the need to meet the production of low-volume products.
These have prompted developed countries to encourage manufacturers to move some of their manufacturing back to their home countries, undoubtedly ringing alarm bells for traditional manufacturing powerhouses like China. Third, since the advent of the factory, the distance between product and consumer has never been so close. 3D printing gives consumers the freedom to choose between mass production and personalized manufacturing. Fourth, 3D printing does not require molds and allows for direct prototyping of samples, thus dramatically reducing the time it takes to go from drawing to physical object. Any part with a complex shape can be broken down into a series of 2D manufactured overlays.
Many kinds of "consumables" can be used in 3D printing: sand, elastomers, plastics, metals, and even biomaterials. 3D printing has already found its way into a wide range of industries, including biomedical, aerospace, automotive, industrial design, and many others, and it's still expanding. "Even the U.S. Navy has purchased 90 machines for research and development in aerospace," says Rechtler, CEO of 3D
Systems, the nation's largest publicly traded manufacturer of 3D printers.
More ambitious ideas are also being practiced in labs around the world: researchers in Australia have accelerated the pace of making metal parts, piloting equipment that prints metal parts for automobiles, and a team of researchers in Italy is developing 3D printers for specialty construction, with plans to rapidly build human bases on the moon using lunar dust as a material.
In addition to eliminating the cost of making molds, 3D printing is also surprisingly efficient in terms of material utilization compared to traditional manufacturing processes. U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft a large number of titanium alloy structural parts, such as the use of traditional integral forging methods, the largest titanium alloy integral reinforcement frame material utilization rate of less than 4?9%, the use of 3D printing utilization rate of close to 100%.
3D printing technology through the sintering or melting of metal materials, the direct generation of metal parts and components of the development trend, so that the traditional manufacturing industry feel great pressure. Industry insiders say, "If the metal material is widely used, 3D printing may lead a new round of industrial revolution.
The prelude to China's 3D printing research has thus begun, and like many scientific research fields, universities and research institutes are more sensitive to the trend of technological innovation than enterprises, and are therefore the first to start. Tsinghua University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Beijing Longyuan Automatic Forming System Co., Ltd. have rapidly formed a 3D printing research camp of "three schools and one enterprise" in China, mainly based on the introduction of technology.
In short, 3D technology can subvert the existing manufacturing industry because it has unparalleled performance.
First of all, low cost, can reduce the material utilization rate to 10%. Secondly, fast speed, no processing and installation links, can be molded into a whole machine as is. Thirdly, true mass personalized production. Fourth, performance optimization, because there is no processing and manufacturing limitations, can be printed to truly optimize the shape and structure of the product. Fifth, the flexibility is extremely high, and the design can be changed at any time as needed. Sixth, it is lightweight and energy efficient, realizing green processing. Seventh, the threshold is low, anyone can intervene in the field of product production, and the development of new products with low risk. Eighth, easy to manage, no inventory and production line, and no longer need logistics and transportation.
Because of this, this technology will lead the third industrial revolution after the steam engine and production line. In the near future, consumers will be able to download product designs from the Internet and print them out at home or at a specialized local 3D printing center. This technology will also eliminate the advantages of labor and economies of scale, and the success of a product will no longer depend on cost and scale, but on quality and creativity. The factories that remain will also be completely digitized, entering the era of click manufacturing. In fact, this technology not only prints products, but more importantly, it simplifies the process of creating products so much that everyone is able to participate in it and use the Internet to share ideas, allowing innovation to rise to an unprecedented level, hence the name Personal Manufacturing Revolution.
In this technological revolution, old rules and forces will be destroyed and a new order and power will emerge. At present, there are many emerging companies actively exploring this new field, such as 3D printer manufacturers, Germany's EOS, the United States, Stratasys, 3D
Systems and MakerBot. 3D technology application vendors, Within Technologies (medical artificial bones, etc.), Digital Forming (cell phones, etc.), 3T
These are the most important companies in the world, and the most important companies are the ones that are actively developing this new field, such as EOS. (cell phones, etc.), 3T
RPD (gearboxes, etc.), Harvest
Technologies (hard and soft rubber materials, etc.), Optomec (direct printing of circuits on materials such as glass and plastics), and Shapeways, a separation company of Philips, which prints a number of products in a variety of materials, such as stainless steel, plastics, stone, etc. There are also companies that specialize in 3D printing software.) There are also Geomagic, which specializes in developing 3D printing software, and others. Large traditional companies such as Ricoh are also developing new printing materials capable of printing electronic parts.
(ii) Something new that 3D printing brings to traditional industries is that it will create a new class of creators. Whereas the mission of large companies used to be to specialize in making things for people on a large scale, there will now be some personalized manufacturing. The new industrial revolution will not bring a big change to the traditional manufacturers, because there are a lot of people who are accomplishing the work of the original mission, as in the case of Alibaba, which creates more opportunities for small factories by opening up the marketplace to ordinary people, and small entrepreneurs or people who are just starting their own business will have the opportunity to reach out to merchants through the Internet. The industry of individual manufacturing through the platform will become very long in the future, and Alibaba is just the beginning of this long-tail industry, which is very beneficial to the development of Chinese enterprises.
There are two reasons why more and more small companies can compete with the big ones: one is that they will put more energy into a certain field and market segment. The second is that with the current Internet perspective on future trends in physical manufacturing, there will be many more unexpected innovations from small companies.
For example, the "Pebbles" smartwatch mentioned in the book "Creators" was made by four young people from California, and in many ways it was better than the big companies like Sony. Sony was launching their new smartwatch on a high profile, but it hardly attracted any attention because the day before, four young people from California had launched their wristwatch on Kickstarter, which had more applications, such as compatibility with the iPhone platform, while the Sony smartwatch was only compatible with the Android system. The "Pebble" design is more sensible than Sony's, the pricing is lower, and utilizing Kickstarter, it was also well pre-sold prior to its release. As you can see, some of the creators have already surpassed the big electronics companies in design, marketing and pricing. This can be a bit scary and is a warning to the big companies that small groups making this new way of production can also be better than the big companies.
Startup incubators are a purely commercial way of raising money to get a company started, and Kickstarter is a completely different model - it's crowdfunding, it's consumers raising money to produce a product, and it's fascinating, and it's a game changer in terms of raising money for the startup movement. It solves three major challenges: first, the revenue is credited in advance of when the entrepreneurs need it exactly, i.e., the funds are available when they are needed. Second, funding with it is the equivalent of doing market research before production; it can test whether a product will be successful before it is put on the market, and it can save you time and money; if the product doesn't have enough people footing the bill, the project will fail at crowdfunding. Thirdly, it is equivalent to adding a service to do market research before production, it brings more information and market, not just money, you can know how the market recognizes it before production. But Kickstarter is not only a crowdfunding model, it also gathers many factories and users, and uses successful products recognized by the audience for mass production. It's a "creator's world," a world of small and medium-sized businesses.
Meanwhile, the third industrial revolution is profoundly changing the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. For example, by applying IBM's Smart Cloud
TM technology, producers in the Italian fishing industry (primary sector) can dramatically increase their profitability. As for the secondary sector, smarter computer software, new materials, more dexterous robots, networked manufacturing service providers and new manufacturing methods will drive the digitalization of manufacturing. The tertiary sector also benefits greatly from the third industrial revolution. Alibaba Finance, for example, is a company that provides loans primarily to micro and small businesses.
We all know that it is difficult for micro and small enterprises to raise funds because it is difficult for outsiders to understand their real situation, and it is risky to lend to them. But Ali Financial has done it. Ali Financial's non-performing loan rate is only 0?9%. Ali Finance relies on digital technology. As any individual and enterprise in the use of the network are respectively left after the business behavior, consumer behavior data, Ali Financial can use the means of big data digital technology to analyze these data, thus accurately grasp the situation of these small and micro-enterprises, but also have a certainty, have the confidence to lend money to them. This also gives a boost to the development of small and micro enterprises.
(c) China is a manufacturing country, 3D printing technology will be disruptive to the impact of many Chinese enterprises. China's enterprises must save for a rainy day, and actively prepare for this technological revolution. First of all, we must abandon the negative and conservative mentality, can not be satisfied with the status quo, ignore the crisis, take a wait-and-see attitude, but to have the vision and courage to dare to commit to this new industry, and to immediately start to commit to this. In addition, we should fully realize that the only way to cope with generational change is to carry out in-depth change in all aspects. Enterprises are like living organisms, and generational change is a fundamental change in the environment in which they live, and they cannot continue to survive if they do not change radically. Therefore, in response to this wave of technology, should be fully prepared to give up their existing resources and technology.
Specifically, for existing manufacturing companies, first, to change the product, such as research and development of digital versions of existing products and 3D printing required for the corresponding hardware and software. Second, to change the manufacturing process and methods, first of all, the existing manufacturing system intelligent automation, and the introduction of 3D manufacturing system, the formation of a composite system. Existing technologies will not disappear completely, and hybrid manufacturing systems will be around for a long time to come. UK Cybaman
Technologies developed the Replicator is a composite system, the 3D incremental and traditional reduction of manufacturing (subtractive
manufacturing) combined. Third, it's about changing business models. This new industrial revolution requires a completely different model of value capture and profitability and associated forms of process design, resource allocation and organization.
And for emerging companies, the first step is to choose a reasonable entry point into the product space. 3D has applications, hardware, software, printing materials, services and design. Printing materials development alone is promising, such as carbonate fiber materials, microbial materials and low-cost environmentally friendly plastics and other recycled materials. In addition, any new technology generation has to cross
the chasm in order to be widely accepted, and the bridge to complete this crossing is the core application (killer
app), companies should find similar applications as soon as possible, the launch of many disruptive products. Second, this new technology era will require a new generation of engineers who will adopt a completely different mindset and approach to product design, development and manufacturing. China's universities and colleges will need to offer relevant courses as soon as possible to reserve talent for the new technology era.
3D printing is a powerful and surging wave of technology that will revolutionize human production methods and the pattern of strengths and weaknesses among nations. According to a report by the McKinsey Global
Institute, in this new technological era, manufacturing will flow back to the developed world, and the human resources, economies of scale, and logistical advantages of developing countries will gradually become a thing of the past. In the future, the developed countries may continue to reduce the total volume of product manufacturing, but the total value will continue to increase. More importantly, the developed countries still have a clear advantage in developing this new field.
There is no doubt that this technological revolution will be a serious challenge to our country, but also provides a good opportunity. If we lose the right to speak on the digital manufacturing technology represented by 3D printing in the future, China's manufacturing industry will suffer a cruel blow. Traditional means of manufacturing and production mode will be replaced, low labor costs and other comparative advantages are bound to be lost, the reality of Chinese enterprises tramping at the low end of the industrial chain will further deteriorate. Whether or not China can seize this round of technological innovation opportunities is largely a question of whether China has the ability to reform the existing innovation system. Chinese enterprises must be far-sighted, fast change dare to give up, product innovation, manufacturing innovation and business model innovation closely integrated, the implementation of the trinity of complex innovation. If not, we will certainly be in this new round of industrial revolution by the developed countries and far behind.