3D printer will become the new darling of manufacturing?

There is a printer that can print out a flying aircraft, a rideable bicycle, a piece of cake that can be eaten, clothes and shoes that can be worn, and even a key component that can be printed to shoot. Rifle... This is not a science fiction movie but an existing reality.

Recently, U.S. scientists used a printer to directly manufacture a plastic robotic arm to enable the normal movement of a disabled arm of a two-year-old girl. This “magical arm” once again pulls the 3D printer into public view.

Maybe in many people's minds, knowledge of 3D printers is zero. But it did emerge and it will bring a new revolution in manufacturing.

In fact, 3D printing technology is not complicated in principle. Differing from traditional manufacturing in material subtraction, it follows the addition rule. To print something, you first need to have a 3D perspective view. The software will serially slice the objects on this image and send the slice information to the printer. The print head will start immediately. According to the slice information, one layer The three-dimensional objects are stacked very thinly.

At present, in the international market, the development of 3D printers is extremely rapid and the prospects are also promising. At present, there are two giants of 3D printers in the world. One is the aforementioned Stratasys company, which is a Nasdaq listed company and has just acquired an Israeli 3D printer company called Objet; another giant is 3D Systems, also listed on Nasdaq, which passed in early 2012. The acquisition of two other 3D printer brands, Z Corporation and Vidar Systems, laid the foundation for their status. Stratasys and 3D Systems create nearly $200 million in annual market revenue. The former’s customers include the world’s top 500 companies such as BMW, Dell, Intel and Nike. And more and more areas are using 3D printing technology to create magic; in the past year, news about "realism of magic" of 3D printers has occurred from time to time.

Although China is not currently the main market for 3D printing, there are already many ostensibly nuggets, and this group is constantly expanding. Although there is no authoritative statistics on the Chinese market, users in the industry estimate that the installed capacity of 3D printers at the domestic enterprise level is around 400 units. The growth has been particularly rapid in the past two years, with an annual growth rate of around 70%. The market size must have exceeded 100 million yuan."

We can see that no longer rely on labor, no assembly process, no scrap, and these features of 3D technology will redefine the factory to some extent. If the cost is further reduced, personalized products will gain the same competitiveness as the scale of production. It is expected that by 2020, 3D printers will be able to engage in small-scale production and manufacture of labor-intensive handicrafts and commodities from the past. This new technology is thus reshaping the global manufacturing landscape.

Last June, US President Barack Obama announced a new policy and spent $500 million on the 3D printing industry to enhance the United States' leading position in manufacturing. This year, the “Foreign Policy” magazine website published a report entitled “The future of manufacturing is in the United States but not in China,” and stated that “Technological advances will cause Chinese manufacturing to decline as rapidly as US manufacturing in the past 20 years.”

Lin Yongli, who has been in this industry for many years, does not need to worry too much. So far, there are some limitations in the technology. For example, materials are limited to plastics, resins, and metals, and the accuracy can only be accurate to tens of millimeters. There are also no advantages. He said, "3D printers are not universal machines."

In any case, 3D printing technology realizes a possibility, as long as you have a computer, an idea, whether you are in the backcountry, or the bustling city, you can transform the world by yourself, at least change your world.