Manufacturing And 3D Printing At A Crossroads

If you have dabbled with 3D printing, you know it works like an inkjet printer but in three dimensions. It takes 3D digital files and renders them into physical objects by laying down ink in layers to build them. You can purchase an inexpensive home 3D printer that uses plastic filament inks.

Where else can you find 3D printers in use?

• In biological laboratories, 3D printers using inks made from living cells are building organelles and living tissue.
• Dentists are using 3D printers to create dental prosthetics.
• Builders are using 3D printers with cement ink to construct foundations, walls and entire structures.
• SpaceX and NASA are using 3D printers and metal inks to build rocket parts with no welds.

Industrial 3D printers can be pretty big. Just how big?

The University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) recently announced a 3D printer it calls the Factory of the Future 1.0 (FoF 1.0). The ink it uses comes from biomaterial waste produced by Maine’s sawmills, an estimated feedstock of 1.6 million tons annually that is 100% recyclable.

An article written by Nate Berg for Fast Company describes the FoF 1.0. It is currently housed in a large warehouse and appears as a supersized structure with a distended nozzle attached to “a maze of wires that hang down from a long steel chassis near the ceiling.” The picture accompanying this posting gives you a better understanding of just how supersized the printer is. The FoF 1.0 is capable of rendering objects 29.261 metres (96 feet) long, 9.7536 metres (32 feet) wide, and 5.486 metres (18 feet) tall. Print output is 226.8 kilograms (500 pounds) of ink per hour. It can build a 55.7 square metre (600 square foot) building in as little as four days.

Future upgrades will increase output to produce that same build in 48 hours at a rate of 453.6 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of biomaterial ink laid down per hour. A demonstration of the FoF 1.0 in the field is planned for next year in a project that will render a nine-unit neighbourhood of affordable homes.

The printer doesn’t just lay down biomaterial ink. It also does subtractive manufacturing like milling. It can add different fibres to a print job to create stronger structures that can be stretched to be larger than its bed limits. Subtractive manufacturing allows the printer to integrate wiring, plumbing, and even the finishes within a structure. Imagine using this printer not only to create a home but all the wiring, plumbing and kitchen detailing too. Habib Dagher, Executive Director of the ASCC told Fast Company:

“Calling it a printer is really a misnomer. It’s a hybrid digital manufacturing cell that allows us to bring multiple manufacturing processes together to produce different things.”

The FoF 1.0 has integrated sensors and artificial intelligence software with self-correcting capability so that it can make adjustments during a print job to keep the build fully aligned particularly when stretching beyond the dimensions of its bed.

Dagher sees the printer being used to change “the way we manufacture things in general.” It is no wonder that the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Maine Housing Authority are looking at the FoF 1.0 and its successors as a way to manufacture affordable housing, bridges, wind turbines and ships. The age of 3D print manufacturing is upon us.