Arrrgh
Since 2010, GE has invested $1.5bn in 3D printing, leading to ... 346 patents in the powdered metals field.
Well, that's going to put the brakes back on the low end / open source metal 3D printers then.
GE runs off $1.4bn, hands it to two 3D printing firms
GE, the US industrial jack-of-all-trades, has pledged to invest a whopping $1.4bn in two 3D printing suppliers to boost materials science and improve manufacturing capabilities. Arcam AB and SLM Solutions Group both specialise in metal-based 3D printing with applications ranging from aerospace to the healthcare industry. Both …
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Tuesday 6th September 2016 17:11 GMT Mage
Better than Plastic
The plastic printers, at least cheap ones, seem to be toys.
There was a BBC R4 prog yesterday (Mon 5th Sept 2016?) and basically 3D printing started 30 years ago. It still hyped the idea it would replace mass production and big corporates with small local businesses. Maybe for prototype and niche products, but I can't see it for mass market, where marketing and cost saving / speed etc of traditional stamping / forging / moulded / formed parts is always going to beat 3D printing. The Metal printing though increase range of niche low volume and maybe mould making?
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Tuesday 6th September 2016 17:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Better than Plastic
It will be a good few years before costs come down, if ever. When they do though, I'd love to print out a set of trainers.
In reality, it's all about supplements to existing systems. The screwdriver does not replace the hammer, and the chisel the saw. Likewise there is a market and a use with a little need/demand for 3d printing.
For everything else... there is everything else.
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Tuesday 6th September 2016 18:16 GMT ChubbyBehemoth
That is quite a financial impulse
If they invested 1.5 B $ since 2010 and just this year kick another 1.4 B $ into the technology it shows that it is becoming more mature and is expected to replace quite a part of the current methods.
Metal parts that are more durable and probably more reliable than those produced with previous methods. Maybe even take less energy to produce, don't require as much floor space, are less prone to injure employees, take less material and are thus lighter. Hmm,.. sounds to me there is a definite change this actually is replacing technology after all.
A smith banging a piece of iron can produce a sword in a few weeks, a printer may be able to make a Damasked sword of superior quality in a day or so once the technology is developed. And tomorrow it prints super light horseshoes and a bike frame, single piece gyroscopes or whatever is your fancy.
It only takes other data to change your production and you don't have to wait until you have made new moulds or shapes and replaced all those old often quite heavy ones with the new heavy tools. And if you really need it, you can probably scale up the printer as to at some point print the whole friggin tank close to the battlefield, using engineers that can repair printers and computers rather than highly skilled and experienced metallurgist. And the machines don't tire, nor probably do they wear down as fast as the ones currently used.
Much hyped, yes. But certainly at a point in its evolution where it is starting to be actually economic to replace certain parts of production in the coming 5 years. And an industry that many feel they can't be left out in the IP department. It clearly is now at a stage that the research into other materials than plastics, concrete and chocolate is starting to pay off. And there is very little limit to the materials you might be able to print once the scale down is met. Who knows, maybe even to molecular level once compute power is sufficient.
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Thursday 8th September 2016 09:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: That is quite a financial impulse
Right with you up to the "superior quality". That is not always how materials work. The systems currently produce sub par quality strength, but can sometime produce higher detailed and otherwise impossible to assemble structures (lattices and internal gaps/holes).
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Tuesday 6th September 2016 19:53 GMT ma1010
Like many new technologies...
...it takes time to develop. If it was 1944 and you had somehow wandered into Bletchley Park (without being shot!) and seen those primitive "computing machines," would you have visualized the PC revolution in the 1980's and all the effect it's had on the world? What about the first automobiles? Those were silly toys for rich men to play with. They certainly were not any sort of reliable transportation! And the price -- FORGET the average person ever being able to own one. And then progress happened, and the world changed.
It's early innings for additive technology. It may never be of much use except for one-off production, prototyping and such, or it may be THE NEXT BIG THING. Apparently someone at GE thinks it's worth investing a lot of money in. Will it work out? We'll just have to wait and see.
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Wednesday 7th September 2016 02:27 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: Like many new technologies...
No doubt it's useful.
The issue, the only issue really, is the over-hyped nonsense and such rubbish being mindlessly accepted by sloppy-thinking morons.
Headlines like "....3D Printed Car..." are bad enough, but when somebody actually believes it. OMG. They actually believed that somebody had 3D Printed a "fully driveable car". Sigh.
Another airhead actually claimed to have 3D Printed his 3D Printer. It required far too much effort to extract an admission that only the plastic bits were 3D Printed. All the metal bits and 100% of the technology subassemblies (stepper motors, drive hardware, circuit cards, power supply, etc, etc., etc...) were bought on eBay. And those plastic bits could have been injection molded in about four seconds, instead of taking endless hours. The same box from China could have delivered them with the other bits.
On the bright side, 3D Printing techniques might be of some assistance in creating the metal molds used for injection molding.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
