The coming decades could see AM bring innovative manufacturing to most businesses, but education and enablement must catch up first.
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Production-ready 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM) has been around for more than 35 years, with adoption rates growing across almost every major industry. The coming decades could see AM bring innovative manufacturing to most businesses, but education and enablement must catch up first.
With higher education institutions just now beginning to integrate AM into their curriculums, businesses looking to leverage AM have found themselves relying on third-party organizations to educate their engineering teams. The EOS Additive Minds consulting team is one such organization, here to help engineers along their AM journey, from start to part.
The Levels of 3D Printing Expertise
Industrial 3D printing has an extensive learning curve, but that curve can be broken down into four principal levels or phases:
Level 1: The additive manufacturing basics.
Level 2: How to select the right applications for your production.
Level 3: AM design and engineering.
Level 4: Scaling and validating production.
The Additive Minds Academy, the education arm of Additive Minds consulting, provides in-depth courses covering each of these levels for engineering teams. Built by current AM engineers for future AM engineers, these courses are meant to get teams up to speed and help keep them there. To do that, the courses focus on ten essential skills for additive manufacturing.
Key Skills for Additive Manufacturing
1. Understanding the process
AM is a process, not a button. As much as we might admire a 3D printer’s abilities to start and build on command, the educational portion of industrial 3D printing is not that simple. As an example, here is one way of understanding the phases throughout the AM production journey:
2. Designing for 3D printing
Design is one of the most important parts of the AM process. In the absence of best practices for AM design, every other stage is unpredictable. An educated and creative AM designer can decrease the amount of powder wasted, reduce build times and lower the overall cost-per-part, making them a vital part of the team.
3. Managing the system and application engineering software
To create a great application, you need to master both the system and software at play. To select the right quality part parameters in each case, you need to understand what these part parameters mean for your application performance and what results will come from changing process parameters, such as up-skin, core, down-skin, overlapping and contours.
4. Selecting the right material
Every material has its own unique properties and will behave differently throughout the AM process. Therefore, you need material-specific parameter training to understand the values and implications of different material selections. Exposure settings for hatch, contour and edge effects are also vital to the successful AM application.
Material selection also applies to application performance, in terms of finding the right material to fit the desired application capabilities. It is important to know which materials shrink, warp or deviate when processed and exposed to various environments.
5. Preparing for the build
Understanding the data preparation process enables users to optimize job preparation and reduce failed builds, saving both time and money. Learning how to design successful support structures, how to choose appropriate materials and how to select the most beneficial parameters for each application type does not come naturally – no matter how easy AM experts may make it seem from an outside perspective.
6. Operating the AM system
Using an industrial AM system requires extensive training on the safe and efficient operation of the machine itself and its peripherals. This includes the handling of the processing software, the set-up, job start and observation of the process.
7. Post-processing and surface finishing
Additive manufacturing is not only about designing and preparing parts for 3D printing, but knowing how to make them shine after the build is successful. A distinguishing feature of professional AM applications is the level of post-processing used to smooth, shine and finalize the part.
8. Defining the desired quality
Understanding what quality means within the 3D printing industry and how to measure it throughout the AM process is another element of becoming an established 3D printing engineer. To truly benefit from the use of industrial 3D printing, an engineer should be able to identify the relevant quality criteria such as dimensional accuracy, tensile strength, hardness, density and electrical conductivity.
9. Developing skills for business
Learning how to properly carry out a business case analysis is a key step on the AM journey. This presents the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of the entire process chain. Getting to know the impact of key cost levers and how to reduce overall cost-per-part is an integral part of preparing a business for future AM projects, as well as understanding both the quantitative and qualitative types of business models.
10. Distributing production
Before starting serial production, simulating it using a digital twin helps forecast the throughput and output of a production site based on the machine parking equipment, operator shifts, machine maintenance procedures, etc.
Since the entire process chain is digitally synchronized from procurement to production and all machines are connected and communicate via the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), engineers can easily align production with local demands while significantly reducing transportation and storage costs.
How to learn more and grow your expertise with the Additive Minds Academy
Whether you are a professional engineer seeking to build your knowledge of 3D printing, or a business leader seeking new talent to take advantage of AM, training your workforce for industrial 3D printing is necessary.
The Additive Minds Academy has developed a comprehensive online training program to optimize the onboarding process of internal engineering teams and accelerate knowledge buildup. Its portfolio consists of online courses and e-learnings for all levels of expertise, making additive manufacturing knowledge available anytime, anywhere.
