As industry 4.0 evolves, the 3D printing industry is unlocking new use cases by enabling industries to flexibly work with numerous plan selections in terms of design complexities, easy replication and design modifications of prototypes, according to GlobalData
Manish Dixit, principal disruptive tech analyst at GlobalData, said, “The blend of hardware, software and materials innovation is now enabling organisations of every size to evaluate the potential use of 3D printing within a blended manufacturing model driven by the buy, build and partnership model.”
According to GlobalData, the top five industries in terms of adopting 3D printing include aerospace and defense (ADS); pharma and medical; oil and gas; automotive and construction.
The 3D printing technology is getting widely used in the oil and gas and energy sector. Due to the nature of the operations within the oil and gas industry, several facilities, plants and rigs are situated in remote areas and transporting spare parts or maintenance crews to them is a drawn-out process. To overcome these issues, Shell employed 3D printing technology for creating a prototype of turret buoy to decrease production time and assembling complexity. It helped the company to design the model within four weeks and helped Shell in saving approximately US$40mn by identifying design and assembly flaws at an early stage.
Dixit concluded, “As enterprises and start-ups turn to 3D printing, the technology is playing a crucial role in reducing the expenditure required to reach the minimum efficient scale for production. Furthermore, 3D printing has moved beyond the technology hype and has an increasingly prominent role by ‘democratising’ technology into the hands of anyone who owns a 3D printer.”
