More and more manufacturers and organizations have realized the importance of sustainability, that’s why they started to apply 3D printing technology in their industries. But how can industrial 3d printing improve sustainability? Today we will guide you through 4 aspects.
1. Manufacturing Process with higher efficiency
Most traditional manufacturing industries adopt CNC (also known as subtractive manufacturing) for manufacturing. It needs to remove the materials from a solid block of material, which means waste will appear and some of them can be reused, while others can’t. Even if they can be reused, reprocessing is required. On the other hand, with industrial 3D printing technology, it will decrease waste increasingly as it does not need molds. For example, the reuse rate of an industrial 3D printer from Eplus3D can reach about 80%, which greatly improve sustainability.
2. Product Design with higher efficiency
Generally, with industrial 3d printing technology, products will be designed with less materials. For example, 3d printing usually comes with an advanced digital design equipment which can realize new design functions, such as crystal structure, which can create higher intensity with less materials. Secondly, with industrial 3d printing technology, multiple parts can be combined into one part, which means less materials will be needed.
3. Supply Chain with higher efficiency
Normally there are three supply chains, by land, by air and by sea. With industrial 3d printing, we have found another efficient supply chain: cloud. With cloud, virtual warehouse is replacing physical warehouses.
We can print based on actual needs, instead of manufacturing a large number of products which will be stored in the warehouse,thus creating a huge waste on both materials and space. in the future, digital logistics and traditional logistics will be combined efficiently to improve the whole supply chain.
4. Accelerating innovation
As 3d printing will not be confined to prototype design of traditional manufacturing, companies with industrial 3d printing technology can push their products to the market more quickly, respond to customer needs more quickly and make use of materials, procedures and manpower more efficiently.
Future of Industrial 3D Printing in Sustainability
With innovations of industry 4.0, we will rise to the challenges quickly, by creating a better, more efficient and more environmental-friendly industry for future generations. Some leading companies have started to change their supplies to 3d printing, so as to produce products with better performance and lower waste.
There is still a long way to go. But if we learn more about 3d printing and bring it to all of industries, there is an opportunity for us to achieve higher efficiency in manufacturing economy.