Sigma Labs Inc (SASI)

[GetRich1day]

Auto industry studies if 3-D printers can meet production demands

The emerging practice — also called additive manufacturing — has enormous implications for the auto business. Manufacturers spend huge amounts to tool up assembly lines to make auto parts. Tools and dies must be created to produce early prototypes of parts, often repeatedly as engineers try to get new parts to meet design specs.

Suppliers and automakers now believe they can sidestep some of that investment and time-consuming effort by using advanced printers that build finished parts to spec by building them up from digital designs.

The technology "has definitely advanced a lot over the last several years," says Deb Holton, director of industry strategy for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. "That's their dream — to make parts without using a mold."

Carbon3D hopes to supplant traditional injection molds on low-volume production runs of 50,000 units a year or less.

Until now, skepticism about 3-D printing has had less to do with the basic science than with the practicality of relying on it on unforgiving factory schedules.

Printers have been slow until now. They could work with just a few raw materials. And the durability of the objects produced was minimal. The layered component could crumble under the stress of everyday use, so they primarily were used for protoypes or display.

But the technology has evolved and is creeping into other industries, such as aerospace and medical products

http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20160509/NEWS/160509837/auto-industry-studies-if-3-d-printers-can-meet-production-demands