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SEEING PROJECTS IN 3-D [PM Network](PM Network Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The global 3-D printing market is expected to grow 23 percent each year through the end of this decade and to be worth US$8.4 billion by 2020. The disruptive technology-which uses an additive process to deposit and fuse layers of material-promises to revolutionize manufacturing, with rapid and customizable prototyping allowing for faster and cheaper product-design projects, according to a 2013 IBM report. The technology has improved exponentially from its beginnings as a curious invention in the early 1980s, and 3-D printers are now poised to capitalize on their revolutionary potential. Their project applications have likewise grown-encompassing not only construction and manufacturing, but also food, electronics and medical devices, among other industries. By closing the gap between a project's design and manufacturing phases, the technology is accelerating the pace of innovation-boosting efficiency and reducing costs. And as 3-D prices drop, use of the technology will rise: 3-D printing costs will fall by 92 percent over the next decade, the IBM report predicts. "3-D printing is not just a prototyping technology. It's a way to make projects more efficient," says )F Brandon, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the former CEO of the Canadian arm of 3-D printing company D-Shape. Getting Up to Speed 3-D printing can lower project costs by allowing designs to be tested and adjusted with the click of a mouse. Changing project specifications can likewise be tested without causing the project budget to balloon. A team at Groep T, an engineering university in Belgium, leveraged this benefit through out its Eve project-a 3-D-printed race car. "For this project, we wanted to use the speed of 3-D printing to optimize the value of each component," says Dries Vandecruys, design engineer for Materialise, a Leuven, Belgium-based 3-D printing company, and the project manager for Eve's 3-D-printed components. Working alongside student engineers, the Materialise team members took an agile approach, designing several iterative versions of each component, which they tested and customized to achieve higher performance ratings. "3-D printing allowed us to develop each part on a separate timeline and avoid any large scope changes to the project," Mr. Vandecruys says. As 3-D printing accelerates the timeline for a project's design and engineering phases, it also allows the team to respond quickly to changes. The Materialise team members encountered one unexpected change after they designed the car's electronic components. They discovered they needed a special housing compartment to optimize airflow among the battery packs to keep them cool. The team rapidly cycled through design iterations to meet the race deadline of May 2013-and even made some race-day improvements. "During the first race, the team noticed a possibility to do a final optimization of two designs and six parts. Due to the flexibility of 3-D printing, we could produce a second small series of parts for the final two races," Mr. Vandecruys says. Printing Near and Far With 3-D printing, "the biggest adoption is being seen in the automotive, jewelry and medical industries," Robin Wilson, lead technologist at the Technology Strategy Board, told Computer Weekly. While using this type of printing to build critical structural components in the aerospace industry is still 15 years in the future, according to Mr. Wilson, 3-D printing aerospace projects abound. As part of the 3-D Printing in Zero-G Experiment, Made in Space and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are collaborating on a project to develop a 3-D printer that will demonstrate how additive manufacturing works in microgravity. The printer is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station later this year. Since 2011, NASA has funded a US$600,000 project to test the concept of printing buildings, roads and launching pads on the moon. The project team will print a quick-setting, concrete-like material from moon dust and other materials to build up the structures layer by layer. Not all fields launching 3-D printing projects are out of this world. In the healthcare sector, Not Impossible Labs' Project Daniel built a lab in South Sudan to manufacture and distribute 3-D-printed prosthetic hands and arms to amputees in need. In the United States, researchers at the University of Illinois and Washington University completed a project earlier this year to develop a thin sheath of flexible silicon that could fit around a model of a rabbit's heart. The 3-D-printed pacemaker could one day displace human versions that are thicker, more rigid and more mechanical than their additive-printed counterparts. In November, Google and 3D Systems, a 3-D printer manufacturer, announced Project Ara. The project team has been tasked with creating a largescale manufacturing platform that can produce customizable, modular smartphones. In the defense arena, Boeing has invested in 3-D printing R&D since the 1990s. It has since used additive printing to manufacture more than 20,000 parts on completed military-platforms projects, according to the company. Construction projects are embracing 3-D printing for its ability to produce low-cost models. Yet some projects are now using 3-D printing to manufacture project components. A Dutch project team is fabricating pieces of a canal house out of plastic in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The demonstration project, launched in March, will span three years, with rooms of the house built and rebuilt as 3-D-printing technology evolves. "There's only way one to find out" the full potential of 3-D printing on construction projects, architect Hedwig Heinsman told the Associated Press. "By doing it." -Kate Sykes "3-D printing is not just a prototyping technology. It's a way to make projects more efficient." -JF Brandon, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Since 2011, NASA has funded a US$600,000 project to test the concept of printing buildings, roads and launching pads on the moon. "3-D printing allowed us to avoid any large scope changes to the [race car] project." -Dries Vandecruys, Materialise, Leuven, Belgium (c) 2014 Project Management Institute |