3-D Printing: Changing face of manufacturing

Three-dimensional (3-D) printing is changing the face of traditional manufacturing. Today, 3-D printers not only make jewellery and toothbrushes but also football boots, racing-car parts, custom-designed cakes, human organs, houses, aeroplane parts and even more efficient lithium-ion batteries. And yes! They even provide blueprints for 3D-printed guns.

Last month, a US federal judge blocked defdist.org from sharing blueprints of 3-D guns. However, the ruling came after thousands of people had already downloaded blueprints for these weapons. As a precautionary measure, some 3-D printing firms are now using gun-blocking software to deter people from printing functional guns, according to a 14 August report by radio programme producer NPR.

According to 6Wresearch, India’s 3-D printer market is projected to touch $79 million by 2021. The growth triggers include the low cost of manufacturing, increased applications and the Make In India campaign. In India, 3-D printers have been used in medical, architecture, automotive, industrial, aerospace, military and other applications, where automotive application accounts for the largest revenue and volume share.

Four years ago, for instance, a team of Indian plastic surgeons at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (Jipmer) in Puducherry restored the deformed skull of a three-year-old girl to its original shape with the help of a 3-D printer that was sourced from a Mumbai-based 3-D printer maker, Divide By Zero Technologies. Jipmer now has its own 3-D Printer.

3-D printing belongs to a class of techniques known as additive manufacturing, or building objects layer by layer. The most common household 3D-printing process involves a “print head”, which allows for any material from plastic (and now metals too) to be extruded or squirted through a nozzle. To be sure, there’s also the concept of 4-D printing, which allows materials to “self-assemble” into 3-D structures, and which was initially proposed by Skylar Tibbits of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in April 2013.

Globally, the 3-D printer market is expected to be worth $32.78 billion by 2023, according to research firm Markets and Markets. The aerospace and defence vertical, according to the report, held the largest share of the global 3-D printing market in 2016.

Globally established companies such as Stratasys and Optomec have footprints in India through partnerships and alliances, notes the above-cited 6Wresearch note. Major companies active in the Indian 3D-printing market space are Altem Technologies, Imaginarium, Brahma 3, KCbots and JGroup Robotics.