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“I Think You Ignore Additive Manufacturing at Your Peril”

I check in with Greg Morris of GE Additive, hearing his views on AM’s continuing promise and importance. Representatives of John Deere, Smith & Nephew, B&J Specialty and Tangible Solutions share their views on the same question.

Peter Zelinski
Blog Post: 5/11/2018
PETER ZELINSKI

Editor-in-Chief, Additive Manufacturing

Video: “I Think You Ignore Additive Manufacturing at Your Peril” - 5/11/2018

From the included transcript:

Greg Morris, GE Additive

So, look, you know I’m a pretty passionate guy about additive, so you know you’re going to get a colored response from me. But I think it’s a fair statement to say that I really struggle sometimes to think of an industry that makes something that isn’t somehow using additive and if they’re not—you know, maybe there’s something out there, but you look at all the different modalities, all the different materials and all the different application points and it’s hard to ignore it. I mean, it’s really hard to suggest that additive is not going to be something that is a major disruptive technology to at least consider in people’s manufacturing processes or industries.

So I pick GE and I say why is GE a litmus test, maybe, for what others will see? It’s because GE is a multinational, very large corporation—it’s a giant industrial company, it gets involved in a lot of different products. Again, from aircraft engines to locomotives to healthcare devices—making CT scanners, oil and gas, you name it. So GE has a very broad industrial base in which it serves. Again, if we are an indication, the proof points we see internally as a corporation—we can clearly identify three to five billion dollars of cost out over the next 10 years. To me, that’s a pretty big number even for a GE. That gets the attention of a lot of people.

So I look at that and I say that’s great, so from the cost out standpoint—I look and say additive is fundamentally making us think about our products differently. So just like the ATP, the advanced turboprop engine, will be 35 percent printed components. That’s a fundamental shift in how our engineers and designers are thinking. When we can take 300 disparate pieces that make up a component of an ATP engine and we can now consolidate that and make one part, you know, you’re thinking on levels that you haven’t thought about before. So I get very passionate about the fact that I think it’s a technology that may not be deeply applicable to every industry or to every company but I think you ignore it at your peril. And I’ve seen too many examples of companies who haven’t realized the gravity of it and they find their competitors have been able to leverage the technology in ways they just didn’t think about.