Democratization comes to additive manufacturing, courtesy of Autodesk.
Autodesk has sponsored this post.
3D printing, a technology introduced with a lot of promise, is now beginning to deliver. We heard how it was meant to create anything from cakes to kidneys. However, selling 3D printing to consumers proved difficult. Then 3D printing was to replace engineering prototypes. It was renamed rapid prototyping. It wasn’t. The part “growing” in the vat was fascinating, not fast—and then the novelty wore off.
But when industry picked up 3D printing, reinvigorating the “additive manufacturing” moniker early adopters had already attached to the process, we started to pay attention.
As additive manufacturing began, you could make any part you wanted—as long as it was small, and plastic. An entire industry sprang up out of nowhere with companies exhibiting 3D printers. All the booths at trade shows had their own collection of thumb sized figurines, all plastic and all useless. The media, gaga for the surefire next-big-thing, kept up the hype for far too long. We attended the shows, collected 3D printed bottle openers (that broke), gears and bearings that would never mesh or roll for long. It was fun, as media frenzies tend to be, but the engineering and manufacturing community stayed away. The exception was the dental industry, happy to make custom dental implants. For them, the process was relatively rapid.
Interest from a jaded industry perked up with the introduction of actual engineering materials into additive manufacturing. 3D printers that could make carbon fiber parts using continuous fibers was like a shot of adrenaline to aerospace engineers. 3D printing parts in ceramics or metal was an eye-popping advance. Additive manufacturing was now, quite literally, ready to take off.
Early adopters jumped at the chance to employ additive manufacturing. For some, there appeared a chance to make shapes never before possible and only ever dreamt of—such as turbine blades with internal cooling channels. To make the impossible warranted wizardry of all sorts via testing, rework and experimentation, as well as acquiring—if only through a service provider—the million-dollar monster of a machine that could sinter metal powder into a shape that was close (it was never exact) to the shape you wanted.
For the mainstream, the leading edge was the bleeding edge. For marginal gains, it was not worth certifying a new method of manufacture. What was needed was a bridge to the new technology: a guiding hand through a familiar and trusted application that could be extended to include additive manufacturing.
Enter Autodesk, the company that introduced “democratization” when introducing another technology (CAD, then simulation) to engineers and designers.
It turns out 3D printing is far more involved than simply hitting “print” from a CAD program. For metal parts, it is even more involved still. To bridge design to 3D printing for metal, Autodesk offers the Fusion 360 Additive Manufacturing Build Extension to users of its do-all Fusion 360 design and manufacturing software. This extension is specifically for producing metal parts using powder bed fusion printers, and for that purpose it is able to orient the metal parts for the best build and pack them for the maximum production. Using Autodesk software to design the part and control 3D printing it has an extra benefit: the design model is associated with the 3D print model. Changes in one are reflected in the other.
Find out more about Fusion 360 Additive Build Extension here.
