A photo shows a pneumatic tire (NPT), a tire without air, during Goodyear’s NPT tire showcase in Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg, on May 17, 2022, where the tire manufacturer Cars have a new factory where they are testing. with 3-D printing.
Francois Walschaerts | Afp | beautiful pictures
Additive manufacturing is on track to be adopted more widely by industry, as large companies Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Boeing as well as small innovative startups that demonstrate it can work well on a production scale.
In May, Goodyear opened a $77 million factory in Luxembourg that focuses on 3-D printing and can produce tires in small batches four times faster than conventional production. Goodyear is also testing 3-D printed air tire technology on Tesla electric car and Starship Technologies’ automated delivery robots. It has been working for the past few years to improve manufacturing techniques at an R&D center near Columbus, Ohio.
By 2030, Goodyear aims to bring maintenance-free and airless tires to market, and 3-D printing is part of that effort by the Akron-based tire manufacturing leader, established was founded in 1898 and named after the innovator Charles Goodyear. Currently, about 2% of its output is through additive manufacturing, and more integration into the mix is on the horizon.
“Like with any innovation, targeting the right use cases is key. 3-D printing isn’t for every job. We’re using additive manufacturing for premium tyres. more, ultra-high performance, requires more complexity and in smaller numbers, says Chris Helsel, Senior Vice President, Global Operations and Chief Technology Officer at Goodyear. benefits of producing large tires efficiently through a normal assembly line.”
Leveraging new technology takes patience. “You can’t bring it in, turn it on. It’s not a short way. We’ve been on this road for 10-12 years,” Helsel said. During the first commercialization of 3-D printed air tires in 2017, Goodyear began equipping high-end models of lawn mowers manufactured by Bad Boy Mowers.
Recent history and future development of 3-D printing
The technology of printing objects layer by layer from designs on a computer originated in the early 1980s. It is now transforming factories and is no longer considered a novelty, although it has gained popularity. transformed over a decade ago by desktop 3-D printing company MakerBot in the consumer hobbyist market. Today, a wide range of products from aircraft parts to aligners and car seats are being manufactured in addition.
This new technology is being seen as a competitive advantage and as a way to enhance the US manufacturing base and supply chain. But it may not revolutionize industrial production overall.
“Additive manufacturing remains a very technology,” says Jörg Bromberger, director of strategy and operations at McKinsey in Berlin and lead author of the consulting firm’s recent report on industrial technology. Small and specialized. “Investing heavily in additive manufacturing may yield some benefits, but it is still quite limited,” he said.
Primarily useful for manufacturing high-value specialty parts and smaller production volumes, Bromberger has pegged additive manufacturing at 2-3% of the $12 trillion manufacturing market.
3-D printing industry consultant Wohlers Associates expects the additive manufacturing industry to grow at a relatively strong pace and predicts the global market will reach $85.3 billion by 2031 from $15.2 billion by 2031. USD by 2021. The top industrial sectors using this technology are aerospace, followed by medical/dental and automotive, while the most common applications for 3-D printing are for manufacturing. manufactures end-use parts and functional prototypes, according to the company’s 2022 Wohlers Report.
The main advantages of this technology include design flexibility with different 3-D shapes that may work better or less cost, and the production of parts on demand. Other advantages are cutting out time-consuming pre-production processes and creating on-demand products from digital files.
A major barrier to adoption is investment costs. Prices for industrial 3-D printers can vary from $25,000 to $500,000 and up to $1 million for large systems. Other limitations are the lack of technical talent to implement the technology, the knowledge gap between businesses on why and how to use it, the cultural resistance on the store floor to change, and too little. end-to-end 3-D printing system.
Vendor consolidation is underway in the industrial market that can provide more complete service and one-stop purchasing for manufacturers. For example, Burlington, based on Mass. Desktop Metal acquired ExOne Company in North Huntingdon, Pa. in a deal in November 2021 bringing multiple additive manufacturing solutions under one roof.
But the stock market’s reception of 3-D printing as a purely gaming investment subject has not been good in recent years. Metal desktop has lost almost 80% of its value since going public in 2021 and the performance of other 3-D printing fields was poor even as technology advances.
In another notable partnership, some of the nation’s largest industrial companies are working with a family-owned Rust Belt company to supply 3-D printed components.
Humtown Products, a 63-year-old family-owned foundry near Youngstown, Ohio, adopted 3-D printing in 2014 as an efficient way to create industrial cores and molds. Early adoption helped keep the company afloat after struggling through the 2009 recession and as the US foundry business moved overseas or died out in the face of cheaper competition in the US. foreign. Humtown Products was able to retain large corporate clients including GE, Caterpillar and Cummins.
Today, its additive manufacturing division accounts for 55% of total sales and is growing by 50% annually. The move to 3-D printing is the company’s “Kodak moment,” said owner and president Mark Lamoncha. “If you’re not in the next space, you’re out of business,” Lamoncha said. “The industry is at the point where it’s coming to commercialization and in many areas it’s the equivalent of driving a race car,” he said.
Truck engine manufacturing company Cummins is using Humtown as a supplier that can improve accuracy in the fabrication of 3-D printed castings and has streamlined production by printing large parts in a single piece instead of composites. “We’ve had great success with it. Volume is starting to pick up and while the price is still a bit higher than the usual process, it’s a lot more accurate and we can triple that. his processing power, or Larry Lee, Cummins’ technical advisor said.
Humtown Products, a 63-year-old family-owned foundry near Youngstown, Ohio, first adopted 3-D printing in 2014 to make industrial cores and molds for clients including GE, Cummins and Caterpillar.
Humtown products
Humtown Products was able to harness this technology through a group of 3-D printing resources in Youngstown that businesses, government, and academia have supported to help revive the local economy of the former steel town. . This technology hub includes several entities located in northeast Ohio at the forefront of the 3-D printing industrial revolution: government-backed industry accelerator America Makes, Business Incubator Youngstown is home to 12 additional startups, such as industrial machine builder and designer JuggerBot3d, and Youngstown State University’s Innovation Center in Additive Manufacturing and the new Valuable Training Center of Excellence. price of 12 million dollars.
“Regions are seeing opportunities to build workforces around this technology, but there is still a knowledge gap in terms of lessons learned and lessons learned,” said John Wilczynski, chief executive officer of America Makes. Success Story”. “We’re aiming to fill that void.”
Aerospace company Boeing is working on refining its own approach to additive manufacturing. Boeing’s Additive Manufacturing Center in Auburn, Washington, is designed to research the use of cutting-edge technology.
“For the industry, it’s definitely a competitive advantage because you can design in ways that you can’t do with traditional manufacturing,” said Melissa Orme, formerly vice president of manufacturing. additives since 2019, a role across the company’s three businesses. units that build commercial aircraft, satellites and defense systems. She works with a team of 100 engineers, researchers and other professionals in advancing the development of technology.
Orme cited advantages in reducing production time by a factor of ten, streamlined design into one large piece for assembly, and increased durability.
“We are very well versed in using 3-D printing for satellites now,” she said.
For Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems subsidiary, which was acquired in 2018 as a small satellite manufacturer for national security space, 100% 3-D printed satellites were produced during the year. Now with 30% lower cost and 5 months reduced production time. A frequent user of the technology for several years, Boeing also has 3-D printed parts for helicopters and seats for the Starliner spacecraft, as well as parts for the Boeing 787 aircraft and tools for the aircraft. 787 wings.
Even so, challenges remain in the adoption of new technology. “It requires a cultural change to embrace it,” Orme said. “Engineers are taught how to design to reduce risk, and that leads them to traditional manufacturing,” she said. “We needed more manufacturing data to achieve this level of design comfort for women,” she said. countries”, which is equivalent to seven decades of data on traditional production. “Once we do that, we can eliminate or reduce the risks of this evolving technology,” she said.
