Where is the industrialization of 3D printing? Precision casting may be a breakthrough

Dalian Yuchen Machinery Co., Ltd., Dalian Precision Casting, Dalian Stainless Steel Precision Casting, Dalian Carbon Steel Precision Casting, Dalian Alloy Steel Precision Casting, Dalian Precision Casting, Dalian Aluminum Alloy Precision Casting, Dalian Precision Aluminum Casting Factory, Dalian Parts Machinery Processing, Dalian Machinery Processing Plant.

Guidance: It is understood that in less than a year, many enterprises have quietly transformed, and even fell on the way ahead. Rather than a repeat of the "natural selection" model, we prefer to compare it to the advent of a long night after the bubble burst. In the night, not only the bloody cleansing of "survival of the fittest" is floating, but also the insistence of the flag bearer and the rational meditation and hard exploration of "where is the way".

Review the 3D printing foam under the flourishing age

In 2007, Reprap, a world-renowned open source hardware project, published all the drawings and program codes of Prusa Mendel, a model of 3D printer. In 2009, the FDM patent of StrataSys, the world's largest 3D printer company, expired, opening the door to the open source movement of 3D printing technology. For a time, numerous technology enthusiasts and entrepreneurs started their businesses. Companies are flooding into the field. In 2012, The Economist published a special article saying that "3D printing will become the third industrial revolution" and that in 2013 the U.S. government will put the words "3D printing has the potential to revolutionize everything we make" into the White House State of the Union Address, completely detonating the outline of "3D printing". Read.

With the rapid follow-up of domestic media and government, the situation of overthrowing the traditional manufacturing industry with rapid prototyping technology has come into being. At this time, 3D printing has reached the apex of technological innovation. However, 3D printing can not escape the same "fate curve" as other new technology applications. From 2007 to less than 5 years, it went through the technological Innovation (Trigger), and down from the Peak of Inflated Experctations in 2013, until today it has gone to the bottom of the bubble rupture (Through of Disillusionment).

A large number of 3D printing companies went bankrupt, the industry has not yet seen the widespread use of this technology, all the wonderful scenes described before have hardly been realized, and the investors who were enthusiastic before have disappeared. Night will drown many people who have no time to think about their way out, while those who survive the night watchman, in constant reflection, face the abyss and tread with trepidation.

Cocoon Breaking Promotes 3D Printing Into Precision Casting Industry

In the downturn of the whole industry, not long ago, three domestic enterprises jointly released the new application of "3D printing + precision casting" to provide small batch, complex structure of metal parts manufacturing services to customers worldwide. This is a revolutionary transformation led by two 3D printing industry watchmen, which indicates a new leap brought by 3D printing technology: from making samples to manufacturing final parts, from single sample production to small-scale multi-batch production, or even mass production.

Reflections: Where is the Blue Sea? Where is the sweet well?

The application of FDM technology has led to the prosperity of 3D printing in the past few years. Over the past few years, a large number of desktop-level devices have flooded into society, making this new technology into the public's vision, creating a 3-D printing of popular science carnival.However, while China is still keen to talk about the blowout development of desktop-level 3D printing devices in the consumer market, Makerbot, as the vane of the 3D printing desktop industry, committed itself to the industry giant StrataSys in 2013 and laid off its staff again in 2015, as well as the desktop owned by another giant, 3D System. A series of phenomena, such as the discontinuation of Cube series of first-class brands, can be said to be "two days of ice and fire". In small factories around Shenzhen, the price of a common desktop 3-D printing equipment is less than 1,000 yuan, which is now in the quagmire of price war.

The application of 3D printing to prototype is one of the most closely integrated application directions in the field of industrial production. According to Sculpteo's latest "The State of 3D Printing (Edition 2017)", prototype application accounts for 34% of the total application of technology, while concept product verification accounts for 23%. The superposition of the two has exceeded 50% of the total application of 3D printing technology.

In fact, the industrial model sample market, which is the main application of 3D printing technology, has always been the world of the traditional handboard industry. For those emerging 3D printing enterprises lacking the traditional hand-board foundation, it is also extremely difficult to get a piece of cake from the domestic hand-board industry. According to industry statistics, the current profit margin of industrial model industry is actually less than 20%, and the production of industrial model is often only a personalized trial production from 0 to 1, lacking a huge value system of large-scale production. Diversified scale, insufficient profits and fierce competition make many companies with 3D printing service as their main industry also face tremendous pressure of survival.

With the increasing cost pressure of the industry and the deteriorating competitive environment, there is still a big gap between core technology and overseas technology. If enterprises want to survive in the future, they must find their own "sweet wells". The author interviewed the managers of the above companies, and we all agree that:

· 3D printing must find a foothold in the traditional manufacturing industry. It must "integrate" and "improve" instead of "subvert" the same industry. It is dangerous to use slogan ideas to run enterprises.

· The essence of 3D printing is manufacturing. The core of manufacturing is quality and cost. Without scale effect, it is difficult to survive. It is necessary to move 3D printing from the position of manufacturing sample to the way of producing final products and small batch and mass production.

· Find the unique advantages of technology, and play to the extreme, find a very precise point for saturation attacks.

The Future Foundry Industry is a New Blue Sea

The survey shows that the size of the foundry market is nearly 1000 times larger than that of the industrial sample market. According to the statistics of China Foundry Association, the number of foundry enterprises in China reached 30,000 in 2010, ranking the first in the world. According to the statistics of China Machinery Industry Federation, there were only 5,957 Enterprises above the scale of China Foundry Industry in 2010, with an average annual output of 3,506 tons per plant. Precision casting is the subdivision field with the highest technology level, the most complex technology and the highest profit margin in the foundry industry. A large part of the complex parts of aviation and automobile are produced by this technology.

As each precision casting part must correspond to a wax mould and shell, the 3D printing material PolyCast used above has reached 3/100,000 ash degree, which is enough to replace the traditional casting wax in technological performance. The 3D printing cluster of No. 1001 has fully used MES system in the industrial 4.0 era, which is fully automated and greatly improves the capacity of large-scale production. Moreover, because the new material will not deform at room temperature, it has more obvious advantages in large castings.

Compared with the direct metal 3D printing process (SLM/EBM/DMLS, etc.), the new technology of "3D printing + precision casting" has incomparable advantages in cost and material selection.

1) Under the current technological conditions, the equipment cost, material cost and maintenance cost of metal 3D printing are very high, which is at least one order of magnitude higher than that of "3D printing + precision casting".

2) The materials available for direct 3D printing of metals are mostly limited to titanium alloys, cobalt-chromium alloys, stainless steel, die steel and other limited types. The traditional casting process has no special restrictions on the types of metals.

3) Direct 3D printing of metal is still a technology of "isolated island", "3D printing + precision casting" can cooperate with tens of thousands of enterprises in the industry, fully leveraging the overall advantages brought by mature industry.

To enter the investment casting industry is only an exploration of the application of 3D printing technology. We firmly believe that there will be more application of technology in the future. This depends on the industry's tireless efforts in technological innovation. As a new manufacturing technology, how to face the eternal issues of quality, cost and speed is a constant challenge for the industry peers. Let's wait and see.