What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of 3D Printing?

Why use 3D Printing or Additive Manufacturing? Despite its drawbacks, additive manufacturing is beneficial in many positive ways compared to traditional manufacturing methods. There are many positive aspects to additive manufacturing related to design, cost and time etc.

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of 3D Printing

What are the Pros of 3D Printing?

This production process offers a range of advantages compared to traditional manufacturing methods. These advantages include those related to design, time and cost, amongst others.

1. Design Freedom.

Traditional manufacturing processes have limitations in the designs that can be manufactured. With additive manufacturing printing, these design limitations are vastly reduced. You can create and print more complicated designs with additive manufacturing printing.

2. Speed of Prototyping.

Parts can be manufactured using additive manufacturing in just hours, providing rapid prototyping. Each stage is completed faster than traditional manufacturing methods.

Compared to machined or contrived prototypes, additive manufacturing is cheap and fast at creating parts. The part is complete and each transition to modified design can be built also at a quicker and more efficient basis.

3. Print on Demand.

Print on demand is an additional bonus for using 3D printing as do not need considerable warehousing space for stocking inventory.

All manufacturing uses up a lot of space and 3D printing can keep costs down because 3D printing does not necessarily require you to have lots of stock on hand; you print and manufacture as an when you need (unless it is a bulk order where stock is required to be printed).

The 3D design files are kept in a virtual library. When the files are printed, they are printed using a 3D model, either a CAD file or STL file, meaning they are easily found (when needed) to print.

You can make edits to designs at very low cost, simply editing an individual file, without having to waste out of date inventory or invest in tools.

4. Strong and Light Weight Parts

The primary 3D print material is plastic but metals can also be used for 3D printing. The advantage of plastics is they are lighter than metals. This is very good in the automotive and aerospace industries where weight removal can lead to better fuel efficiency.

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Parts can be made from customised materials that offer properties of their own such as heat resistant, higher strength or water.

5. Fast Design and Production

Depending on the design and complexity parts can be 3D printed usually in a few hours, which is much quicker than moulded or machined parts.

It is not only the production of the part that can save time through 3D printing but also the design process can be fast by creating STL or CAD files for print.

6. Minimising Waste

Barely taking what you need, the production of parts due to 3D printing only requires the required amount of materials for part without any waste compared to other methods by cutting away from large chunks of materials that can only go to land fill. To top it off, the processing of the materials is also less expensive.

7. Cost Effective

As 3D printing is a single step manufacturing process and uses less time, therefore expense related to using different machines for manufacture and lesser overall expenses. The beauty of 3D printing is that they can be set up and left to get on with the work.

This means that an operator does not have to be present the entire time. As illustrated above, this manufacturing process can also save costs on materials as it only uses the material for the part itself, making excess material wastage negligible or non-existent altogether.

Even though 3D printing equipment can be costly to buy, you can completely avoid the costs of purchasing equipment by outsourcing your project to a 3D printing service company.

8. Accessibility

3D Printers are easier to access than ever before as there are more local service providers opening that outsource various manufacturing work. Saving time and money compared to normal international transportation costs for more traditional methods of manufacturing in overseas countries like China.

9. Environmentally Friendly

As this technology minimizes the excess material that could be wasted, this is inherently a more eco-friendly method of production. The environmental factors can be extended even further by including lighter-weight materials being produced using 3D printed parts leading to fewer transportation costs from a fuel-efficient perspective.

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10. Advances in Health Care

3D printing technology is being utilized within medicine to help to save lives by producing organs for the human body such as livers, kidneys and hearts. There has already been a number of advances and further uses from research are being developed in the healthcare sector achieving some of the greatest advancements from using the technology.

What are the Cons of 3D Printing?

Like most things that rely on the technological revolution, 3D printing technology and methods have cons regarding the overall process which needs to be considered before making a decision to use this process.

1. Limited Materials.

3D Printing can create objects in a variety of plastics and metals although there are limited options for raw materials. This isn’t due to the fact that they can’t be printed since not all metals and plastics can be temperature controlled enough to allow for 3D printing. Also, some of the materials have no or limited ability to be recycled and few are food safe.

2. Limited Build Size.

While 3D printers can print large objects they have limited print chambers, therefore limiting the size of parts that can be printed.

Anything larger needs to be printed on separate parts and then joined together at completion. This can increase costs and time for larger parts since the printer needs to print more parts before any manual labour is applied to join the items.

3. Post-processing.

Although larger parts may require some post-processing, like mentioned above almost all 3D printed parts require some type of finishing to remove support material from build and to smooth out the surface for the necessary finish.

Overall post-processing methods include waterjet, sanding, chemical soak and rinse, air drying or is it heat drying, assembly or none of the above depending on a few factors such as the size of part being made, application and type of 3D printing technology used to manufacture the item.

So while 3D printing allows us to manufacture at a fast pace the speed of manufacture can be delayed by post-processing.

4. Big Production Volumes.

3D printing has a static cost compared to more traditional processes like injection moulding which are more suitable for big production volumes.

3D printing has lower costs up front on production than traditional techniques but the cost per print does not decrease when scaling to produce items in large volumes for mass production, like with injection moulding.

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5. Part Structure.

3D printing (also known as Additive Manufacturing) produces parts in layers. While these layers are adhered together, they are also intended to delaminate under certain orientations and stresses.

This presents a bigger issue with FDM 3D printing, but polyjet as well as multijiid parts appear to be more brittle less homogenous. While 3D Printing is often preferred due to shorter leadtimes, there are times when injection are needed to produce much better, homogenous parts which will never delaminate.

6. Harm to Manufacturing Jobs.

Certainly an disadvantage of positive 3D technology is that the human labour force is potentially being reduced, as production is predominantly automated and often not human operated.

Many manufacturing jobs are low skill labour in developing countries to run their economy. Therefore this technology could turn out to be jeopardizing those jobs other countries depend on by removing the need to produce

7. Design Flaws.

A further potential issue with 3D printing relates directly to the printer or process itself, some printers have a lower tolerance and this means the processes may not be precisely what has been designed. If post processing is used for accuracy, the designer needs to consider that this will further constrain time and costs used to apply the finishing touches.

8. Copyright Issues.

As 3D printing becomes more popular and more widely available, there is a greater risk that consumers will create duplicate and counterfeit products, and nearly impossible to tell them apart. This of course has obvious implications not only for copyright issues, but also for quality assurance control.

3D Printing Advantages and Disadvantages Comparison Chart

3D Printing Advantages3D Printing Disadvantages
1. Flexible design: more complicated designs more possible.1. Limited materials: choosing from some plastics and metals but still quite limited.
2. Fast prototyping: parts can be produced in hours, and not weeks or months.2. Limited build size: the size of the print chamber can often limit size, larger parts need to be joined later.
3. Reduce stock: both space and cost saving no need for large inventories.3. Post-processing: most parts will require cleaning up or some other post-processing method.
4. Strong and lightweight parts: important for industries such as automotive and aeronautics.4. Large volumes: the unit price did not decrease significantly mean that costs could be reduced for volume production.
5. Rapid design and print: depending on complexity the object can be printed in a single build.5. Part structure: layers can delaminate under procedure stresses due to layer by layer production methodology.
6. Minimizes waste: only uses material on both sides of the part, and avoids wasting unnecessary material.6. Reduction of manufacturing jobs: automation can reduce manufacturing jobs.
7. Cost savings: saves time and money by using a single step manufacturing process to achieve the intended part.7. Design errors: post processing accuracy may be required from some printers due to lower tolerances.
8. Easy to access: local service providers are more accessible; outsourcing this work to be completed is now rather easy.8. Copyright issues: they could contribute increasing risk of duplicate and counterfeit products as this technology becomes more accessible.
9. Green technology: reduced material wastage, produces parts that use fuel more efficiently. 
10. Advancing Health care: parts can be made for organs, and facilitating advancing health care technology.