This document discusses the potential for 3D printing to shape the future of various industries. It notes that the global 3D printing market is forecast to reach $16.2 billion by 2018, and that many major companies have committed to 3D printing. While early predictions for consumer 3D printer uptake were uncertain, business uptake is on a clear rise. The document explores potential applications of 3D printing in construction, manufacturing, consumer goods, and other sectors.

1. P03 Shaping the future
P08 A 3D printer
P10
Three dimensional
of industry
in every home?
by design 11/12/14
#0291
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THIS SPECIAL REPORT IS AN INDEPENDENT
PUBLICATION BY RACONTEUR MEDIA

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3D PRINTING ONLINE:
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Overview
From space probes to
prosthetics, jewellery to
jet engines and concrete
to kidneys, the question must be
asked: is there nothing that cannot
be 3D printed?
The global market is large and
growing, forecast to reach $16.2
billion by 2018. In the UK, gov-ernment
support is standing up to
be counted, with £14.7 million an-nounced
for a new 3D-printing hub
in Coventry.
However, despite the fact it is
now more than 30 years since
Chuck Hull invented rapid proto-typing
in 1983, for many, a whiff of
alchemy still clings to the world of
3D printing.
Predictions for uptake among
the general public remain the stuff
of guesstimates. The same poll that
found one in ten British adults were
prepared to buy into the concept to
the tune of £500 each for a 3D print-er
also discovered four out of ten ad-mitting
they had no idea what to do
with one.
Business uptake, on the other
hand, is on a clear and dramat-ic
upwards trajectory, according
to Terry Wohlers, president of
Wohlers Associates, publishers of
the annual Wohlers Report. “Inter-est
and excitement surrounding
additive manufacturing and 3D
printing are at an all-time high,” he
says. “Corporations, government
agencies, researchers and others
are investing in the technology in
ways not seen in the past. Many
are trying to understand where it
is headed and how they fit in.
“Some of the biggest companies
and brands in the world, such as
Adobe, Airbus, Amazon, Autodesk,
Boeing, GE, Google, Lockheed Mar-tin
and UPS, have made some level
of commitment.”
COMMERCIAL ACCEPTANCE
A barometer of UK commercial
acceptance, the technologically
conservative construction indus-try
is now engaged. An agreement
announced between architects
Foster + Partners, contractor
Skanska, plus Buchan Concrete
and Lafarge Tarmac, allows use
under licence of pioneering
3D-printing technology developed
at Loughborough University.
Simon Austin, professor of
structural engineering at the
School of Civil and Building Engi-neering,
outlines the breakthrough
potential in real applications. “It
opens up possibilities of great
variation in geometry and perfor-mance
of concrete building com-ponents,”
he says. “This is because
the price of each one is roughly the
same, unlike moulded parts where
it is proportional to the num-ber
cast from a single, expensive
mould. Geometry is ‘free’.”
Rather than looking to 3D print
whole buildings or houses, as tri-alled
on a 24-hour turnaround basis
in China, the consortium is focused
on components such as novel, com-plex
façade panels for high-end pro-jects.
Professor Austin is positive
but measured in his assessment
of roll-out potential. “By 2020, we
should see examples of 3D print-ing
applied in a variety of projects
around the world, but it will still be
niche,” he says.
On commercialisation, his cau-tious
optimism is echoed by Mar-tin
Clarke, director of the World
Concrete Forum, who says: “The
new consortium will open eyes
to possibilities. Questions need
to be answered, but the prize is
very high and credible solutions
will be found. I am not convinced,
though, that 3D portable ma-chines
will be on building sites
rather than in permanent precast
production facilities.”
CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS
At the other end of the scale, pur-suing
localised and personalised
distributed manufacturing, sits
one-of-a-kind 3D-printing plat-form
Kwambio.
Previewed at 3D Printshow
London, the platform will allow
consumers to customise and per-sonalise
designer models, without
file transfer, for up to 200 different
products, from practical household
items and pieces of jewellery, to art
and decor. With a few custom clicks,
users can bring a design to life in
their own home, 3D printing results
on the kitchen table.
With more than 1,500 subscrib-ers,
42 per cent in the United States,
$16.2bn global 3D-printing market
forecast for 2018
Source: Canalys
100% growth in 3D printer shipments
forecast every year until 2018
Source: Gartner
93% global rise forecast in 3D printer
sales for 2014
already signed up to free beta-test
the service and future user-fees es-timated
at between $2 and $15 an
item, chief executive and a founder
of Kwambio, Volodymyr Usov, at-tributes
its popularity to a combina-tion
of customisation, convenience
and security.
“No two people are the same
and so it should be with your
products,” he says. “The main
benefit is customisation. Then, as
we focus on owners of 3D printers,
the second benefit is convenience.
Thirdly, while you can have a ‘fac-tory’
at home, you need design
skills to make something printa-ble.
Those who design 3D models
are not willing to post their files
on the web, because of piracy.
That’s why we consider security
the third benefit.”
Also in the personalised produc-tion
market, though centralised,
is Makie Dolls of London, which
3D prints via selective laser sin-tering
(SLS), melting a “dust” of
high-quality nylon into the desired
shape, layer by layer.
The dolls are finished manu-ally
and, interestingly, the mar-keting
points to a consumer per-ception-
gap tension between DIY
artisan chic and industrialised au-tomation,
describing them as being
assembled “by hand with love”.
In development terms, we are
perhaps in the “teenage years” of
3D printing. Markets are yet to be
made (literally) and there is a sense
in which the industry is walking the
talk of the consumer.
3D printing has the potential to shape the
future – in factories, on building sites, in schools,
hospitals and homes, writes Jim McClelland
Distributed in
Publishing Manager
Nathan Wilson
Managing Editor
Peter Archer
Head of Production
Natalia Rosek
Commissioning Editor
Jim Woodcock
Design, Infographics & Illustration
The Design Surgery
www.thedesignsurgery.co.uk
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Some of the biggest companies and
brands in the world have made some
level of commitment
SIMON BROOKE
Award-winning freelance journalist, who writes for a number
of international publications, he specialises in lifestyle
trends, health, business and marketing.
NICK MARTINDALE
Award-winning freelance journalist and editor, he
contributes regularly to national business media and trade
press, specialising in HR and workplace issues.
JIM McCLELLAND
Sustainable futurist, speaker, writer and social-media
commentator, his specialisms include built environment,
corporate social responsibility and ecosystem services.
CHARLES ORTON-JONES
Former Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist
of the Year, he was editor-at-large of LondonlovesBusiness.com
and editor of EuroBusiness magazine.
MIKE SCOTT
Freelance journalist, specialising in environment and
business, he writes regularly for the Financial Times, The
Guardian, Forbes and 2degrees Network.
FLEMMICH WEBB
Freelance journalist, contributing to publications including
The Guardian and National Geographic, he specialises in
sustainable business and environmental issues.
JIM WOODCOCK
Group editor and conference director at TCT + Personalize,
he specialises in 3D printing and additive manufacturing
product development.
SHAPING UP
TO THE FUTURE
Image: Getty
Source: CCS Insight
Published in association with
The 3D Printing
Association

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3D PRINTING
11/12/14
EDITION #0291
Manufacturing
NOW 3D PRINTERS ARE
PRODUCING FACTORY GOODS
Research by CCS Insight
suggests the 3D-printing
market will grow from
$1.15 billion in 2013 to $4.8 billion
in 2018, with industrial applications
accounting for three quarters of rev-enue
by then.
Salome Galjaard, a senior de-signer
at engineering consultancy
Arup, says the past year has seen
a shift away from the hype around
consumer usage towards a greater
consideration of how 3D printing –
or additive manufacturing – can be
used in industrial applications.
“It can have a huge impact on
everything from the design process
to production, storage, installation
and recycling,” she says. “It could
allow engineers to make things we
weren’t able to produce before, using
amazing optimisation techniques.
Storage and transport can become
cheaper, as products can be created
on site, and even installation could
be easier if the function of multiple
products is integrated in one.”
The potential is such that the
UK’s innovation agency, Innovate
UK, has now made additive manu-facturing
one of its key areas for in-vestment
and is currently financing
18 projects at a cost of £17 million,
designed to accelerate its take-up
in real-life scenarios.
“These focus on a variety of chal-lenges,
some aimed at improving
the core additive manufacturing
process itself to make it faster,
and produce parts with better and
more consistent material proper-ties.
While others are concerned
with what issues should be ad-dressed
before you start the build
process or after you’ve finished it,”
says Robin Wilson, lead technolo-gist
in high-value manufacturing,
at Innovate UK.
FINISHED PRODUCTS
Already there are cases where
additive manufacturing is having
an impact, particularly in sectors
such as aerospace, healthcare and
the automotive sector. While some
are using the technique to develop
prototypes, others have started pro-ducing
finished goods which cut out
multiple tiers – and costs – associ-ated
with traditional supply chains.
Shoes By Bryan uses 3D print-ing
technology to manufacture
eco-friendly shoes and founder
Bryan Oknyansky, who is also a
lecturer at Regent’s University
London, believes over the next five
years this could challenge the tradi-tional
mass-manufacturing model.
“Whereas contemporary manu-facturing
models require scale and
standardised design to produce high
volumes of products, the new man-ufacturer
is poised for one-off or
small-batch production, depending
When most people
think of 3D printing,
they may consider
prototyping or creating
products in the comfort
of their own home, yet
the real potential lies in
manufacturing, as
Nick Martindale reports
organisations set up their supply
chains, says Hans-Georg Kalten-brunner,
vice president, manufac-turing
strategy, Europe, the Middle
East and Africa, at supply chain soft-ware
business JDA, with businesses
able to position local manufactur-ing
centres closer to key markets.
“There is also an opportunity for
smaller companies, which will be
able to service markets in far-flung
locations without expensive facili-ties
or networks, allowing them to
compete with bigger companies and
offer consumers choice,” he adds.
REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE
This could see suppliers offering
manufacturing as a service, giving
them access to a repair and main-tenance
market which they cur-rently
ignore, says Antony Bourne,
global manufacturing industry di-rector
at software firm IFS. “Tra-ditionally,
cheaper maintenance
services are provided by a separate
company to the one that original-ly
manufactured the product, but
providing downloadable blueprints
would be a relatively small step
for manufacturers to take and one
with a significant return on invest-ment,”
he says.
Further down the line, the focus
could move beyond the current em-phasis
on “hard” physical products,
says Kieron Salter, managing direc-tor
of digital manufacturing firm
KW Special Projects. “In a decade’s
time we will be talking about digital
fabrication not 3D printing,” he pre-dicts.
“Many new technologies and
products, such as augmented reali-ty
contact lenses, clothes that have
embedded sensors for measuring
bio-health or flexible shape-chang-ing
mobile phones, will be made pos-sible.
And by 2025, highly optimised
metallic parts on aircraft, printed
electronic devices, including batter-ies
and printed organs or bio-struc-tures,
will be a reality.”
on which 3D-printing technology
is used,” he says. “This new man-ufacturer
also benefits from the
capability to implement mass cus-tomisation;
it takes as much time to
make the same thing over and over
again as it does to make a different
part every time.”
Yorkshire-based slurry equip-ment
manufacturer Weir Miner-als
Europe is using 3D printing to
manufacture some of its working
parts, as well as providing sales
teams with prototypes and demon-stration
models.
“The traditional method is to
make these patterns from wood
and, while we still make the majori-ty
of our foundry patterns this way,
3D printing has allowed some to
be created in plastic instead,” says
managing director Tony Locke.
“The process can save significantly
on labour costs as the machines can
run with minimal supervision, 24
hours a day.” In time, he expects to
produce more complex parts using
3D printing; the only restriction is
the capabilities of the printers he
has in place.
Harvey Water Softeners, mean-while,
relies on 3D printing to
make prototypes for parts used in
its water softeners, helping it re-duce
the time it takes to come up
with new products. “It allows us
to develop more complex design
iterations more quickly and move
from the test stage to a prototype
faster,” says Martin Hurworth,
technical director. “For a low cost,
we’re now able to turn a concept
into a working prototype in just
three days.”
Other industries could also take
advantage. Luca Corradi, manag-ing
director for Accenture’s Ab-erdeen
energy practice, suggests
the technology could be used to
produce parts for use on demand,
in places such as oil rigs which
could otherwise face shutdowns
until replacements are delivered.
“When 3D-printing technology is
available on-site, spare parts can
be stored digitally, ready for when
the required part needs to be pro-duced,”
he says. “Warehousing and
inventory costs for oil and gas com-panies
can then be reduced and
the lengthy, expensive process of
transporting parts to remote sites
could be eliminated.”
In the longer term, the technolo-gy
could have implications for how
When 3D-printing
technology is available
on-site, spare parts
can be stored digitally,
ready for when the
required part needs to
be produced
Image: Getty
Using 3D printers
to manufacture
end-goods and parts
locally saves time
and money

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Case Studies
3 SECTORS
TO WATCH
HEALTHCARE
The healthcare sector is already
seeing the benefits of 3D printing.
Turkish designer Deniz Karasahin
developed the Osteoid, a 3D-printed
ultrasound cast that emits a low-in-tensity
pulsed ultrasound to help
bones heal.
“Once hooked up to ultrasound for
20 minutes a day, it can help reduce
the time it takes for the injury to heal
by nearly 40 per cent,” says Alex
Chausovsky, principal analyst at IHS
Technology. Other examples he points
to include Project Daniel, run by Not
Impossible Labs, which produces low-cost
prosthetic limbs for war victims
in Sudan, and the Cortex Cast, which
uses nylon rather than traditional
plaster to make casts.
In the future, we could even see
3D-printed organs for use in
humans, says Fred Hamlin, senior
engineer in the medical technology
division, at Cambridge Consultants.
“Today these technologies make
the front page of the newspaper;
in ten years’ time they could be as
commonplace as organ transplants
are now,” he says.
AEROSPACE
3D printing is helping to create more
efficient processes in the aerospace
sector, says Robin Wilson, lead technol-ogist
in high-value manufacturing, at
Innovate UK. “Aircraft manufacturers
have invested billions in developing
the use of metal powders through this
technology to make turbine blades,
jet engine combustion nozzles and
structural parts,” he says.
Parts which previously required multiple
components can now be created in one
go. “For example, a fuel injection nozzle
from GE, which was traditionally made
in a laborious manner and comprised
of 19 different components, can now
be printed in one piece and is actually a
lighter, better-quality component,” says
Sia Mahdavi, founder of Within, now
part of Autodesk.
The benefit is also being felt in the de-fence
sector. “Although entire weapons
have not been printed out yet, there
has already been success in producing
landing gear parts for Tornado aircraft,”
says Brendan Viggers, product and
sales support for the IFS Aerospace
and Defence Centre of Excellence.
In 2012, castings manufactur-er
Grainger & Worrall invested
£500,000 in a 3D printer to help it
meet demand for small quantities of
development parts for prestigious car
brands, including Aston Martin, Bent-ley,
Bugatti, Porsche and McLaren.
“Typically, a tool or pattern is pro-duced
by direct computer numer-ical
control milling,” says director
AUTOMOTIVE
Edward Grainger. “This is then filled
with a sand and resin mix to form the
intricate mould, often of many sepa-rate
pieces of sand, known as cores.
With the 3D printing, we can ‘print’
these sand cores to make the mould
directly and eliminate the need for
the tooling process.”
Motorsport is making use of the
technology to produce parts for de-velopment
models, test and racing
cars, says Kieron Salter, managing
director of KW Special Projects. “We
are also exploiting it to bypass very
long lead manufacturing processes,
such as tooling for composites, to
allow direct manufacture,” he says.
Image: Getty
Image: Stratasys
Image: Alamy

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EDITION #0291
Mass Customisation
MAKING MILLIONS
OF OBJECTS ONCE
3D printing offers
manufacturers an innovative
means of creating
high-volume, low-cost
personalised products,
writes Mike Scott
The era of mass production
started with Henry Ford
proclaiming that custom-ers
for his eponymous cars could
have any colour they wanted as
long as it was black.
We have come a long way since
then in terms of choice – Audi
boasts there are four million possi-ble
permutations for its A6 model,
for example. Nonetheless, except
for the lucky few able to afford
bespoke products, consumers can
get whatever they want, as long
as they want what the machine
makes, according to the consul-tancy
Accenture.
For traditional manufactur-ers,
economies of scale dictate
that the greater the number of
an item they can produce, the
cheaper it is. However, the result,
says 3D-printing consultant Joris
Peels, is that “mass production is
perfect for no one, so producers
end up making one million copies
of something that essentially sucks
for everyone”.
It also leaves businesses with
large inventories facing huge stor-age
costs, along with the problems
of unsold stock with high environ-mental
impact, according to Sunny
Webb, a consultant at Accenture.
But there is a move towards
products becoming more custom-ised
and more personal, and 3D
printing is playing a key role in
that. “Mass individualisation is
where 3D printing comes into its
own,” says Mr Peels.
“Imagine a situation where
someone could walk into a store,
design their own product or cus-tomise
what is already there, print
it and take it home that same day,”
says Chris Elsworthy, inventor of
the Robox 3D printer. “Rather than
selecting their item from a relative-ly
small selection of goods, people
could personalise it for their own
specific requirements.”
Examples include companies,
such as Styku that use 3D scan-ners
to measure shoppers’ bodies,
enabling clothing companies to
make made-to-measure garments
quickly and easily, and Constrvct,
which allows shoppers to enter
their measurements on its web-site
and uses the information to
create an online 3D model show-ing
what the clothing would look
like on their body shape. Normal,
which allows users to print their
own customised headphones, has
a slogan that sums up the ethos of
mass personalisation: “One size
fits none”.
The economies of scale are to-tally
different for additive manu-facturing,
says Phil Reeves, man-aging
director of 3D -printing
consultancy Econolyst. “It costs
the same to make millions of ob-jects
once as it does to make one
object millions of times,” he adds.
MEDICAL APPLICATIONS
Some of the most promising ap-plications
of 3D printing to mass
personalisation are in medical
devices, because each individual
is unique and needs products to
reflect that. More than ten million
people have hearing aids made us-ing
3D technology, says Mr Peels,
and other applications include den-tal
braces, false teeth, splints, or-thotics
and joint replacements. The
medical market is worth around $7
billion to $8 billion a year, he notes.
The process involves a scan be-ing
taken of the relevant body part
to produce a 3D model, which can
then be printed to provide, say,
a hearing aid, a hip joint or knee
replacement that is unique to the
patient and a much better fit than
previous implants.
10m 3D-printed hearing aids in use
around the world
Source: VoxelFab
52% reduction in returns for online
retailers as customers use
3D-measurement scanners
Source: Styku
75% of the 3D-printing market's revenue
is expected to come from industrial
systems by 2018
Source: CCS Insight
A photograph of a
man's ear is used
to build 3D-printed
customised
earphones by New
York startup Normal
3D-printed earphone
Design
Power
Page 10
Image: Getty Image: Normal
“It is a huge help in all kinds
of reconstructive surgery,” says
David Dunaway, consultant cos-metic
and reconstructive surgeon
at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
“It’s a lot quicker and, because we
use artificial material, it means
that we don’t have to harvest bone
from other parts of the body. It has
led to greater accuracy and a huge
improvement in quality. The joints
just fit so perfectly.”
There are even hopes that in
time doctors will be able to “bio-print”
new internal organs using
3D-printing techniques, although
this remains some way off.
Medical and dental devices are
the ultimate high-value, low-vol-ume
markets for which 3D print-ing
is best suited. But that does not
mean the technology is confined to
highly trained specialists.
An organisation called E-nabling
The Future is using 3D printing to
help children who need prosthetic
hands. Many children are not given
prostheses because the devices are
expensive and, because children
Mass individualisation is where
3D printing comes into its own
grow quickly, they get limited use
out of them. But now groups of
tinkerers, engineers, 3D-printing
enthusiasts, occupational thera-pists,
university professors, de-signers,
parents, families, artists,
students, teachers and people who
just want to make a difference are
coming together to print prosthet-ic
hands at a cost of around £30,
says Mr Peels, who acts as a con-sultant
to the organisation.
The hands go both to local chil-dren
and to people the makers
will never meet, such as victims
of the conflict in Syria. “It is a
perfect example of individualis-ation,”
Mr Peels adds. “One kid
wanted their hand to be purple, an-other
wanted to have a Superman
logo on it, while another wanted
it to have six fingers. It shows
how 3D printing opens up a col-laborative
way of designing and
producing products.”
CUSTOMER CHOICE
It fits in with the trend for great-er
choice that internet technology
has enabled – customers can put
together their own music playlists,
curate their interest on sites such
as Pinterest and load up the apps
they want on their smartphones.
But Econolyst’s Mr Reeves be-lieves
personalisation will only
ever be a niche. “It’s not the prima-ry
driver for the development of the
technology and historically it’s not
how people buy or consume prod-ucts,”
he says.
“The way people shop at the
moment works. Just because 3D
printing exists, it doesn’t mean
people are going to personalise
everything.” There are already non-
3D printing opportunities to stamp
your own personality on products.
Nike, for example, allows people
to create their own designs for its
footwear, but only a small propor-tion
of customers choose to do so,
Mr Reeves says.

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3D PRINTING
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EDITION #0000
The 3D shapie:
a great business opportunity
From politicians to pop stars, astronauts
to the Pope, sel es are everyone’s
favourite social media calling card. But
already they are being overtaken by
something better – the shapie
The shapie is like a selfie, but
instead of taking a photographic
self-portrait, you make a 3D model
of yourself.
Here’s how it works. You go to an Artec
Shapify Booth – there are currently ten
in ASDA stores across the UK – pay £60
and stand inside the 3D scanner. Your
scan is fi nished in just twelve seconds;
three minutes later your 3D scan is ready
to preview; fi fteen minutes more and it’s
ready to print.
At this point, you can use a 3D
printer to print off a one tenth-scale,
colour statue of yourself. If you don’t
have access to one, Artec can do it for
you. The Shapify all-inclusive printing
and delivery service means all you
have to do is come back to the booth a
few days later and pick up your statue,
or send Artec your address and it will
be posted to you.
And in case you’re worried that
getting a statue of yourself made is a
little egotistical, you don’t have to do it
alone. The scanner can accommodate
up to two adults and a child.
There are so many shapie ideas
– the only limit is your imagination.
You could take scans of your
children every year, capturing
their changing features
forever in a series of 3D
figures. You could
scan yourself
and your fiancée
to make models
of yourselves for
your wedding cake.
Good at sport? Why
not scan yourself with
your trophies. Or keep
in touch with grandma
by sending her a 3D fi gure
of yourself. You could
even get a statue of you
with a celebrity – if one
happens to be passing
a Shapify Booth and
has 12 seconds to
spare that is. (Good
luck with that.)
The shapie craze has already taken
off around the globe, with booths
operating across the world and new
Shapify Booth installations planned for
Dubai, Luxembourg and Japan in the
coming months.
But as well as being a lot of fun for the
people scanning themselves, Shapify
Booths are a serious, scalable and
profi table business proposition.
If you own a venue or can rent space
in one, Shapify Booths will generate
income, in a similar way to vending
machines. Perfect for anywhere with
a large footfall – shopping centres,
airports, train stations, sports
stadiums, theme parks – Shapify
Booths offer something new for your
existing customers and ensure they
make return visits (to pick up their 3D
fi gures), as well as attract new people
to your venue.
Artec offers two business models. You
can buy an Artec Shapify Booth outright
for $180,000 and keep all the income
you earn from it, or you can have the
machine for free and give Artec a
percentage of the earnings –
$20 for every scan used to
make a statue.
Shapify Booths can be moved easily
to areas of maximum footfall, are low
maintenance, fully automated and
require no expertise to operate. The
operator only has to press a button
and a few minutes later the 3D model
is ready.
They are robust too, built using
Artec’s proven, world-leading
3D-scanning technology, which is
employed globally in various sectors,
including medical, automotive and
industrial. Artec scanners are used in a
wide range of applications, everything
from scanning astronaut spacesuits
and helping create special effects in
the fi lm industry, to the manufacture of
prosthetics and orthopedics, and the
customising of cars.
To make it even easier to set up your
own Shapify Booth business, Artec
provides all the relevant software for
customer relations management as well
as order processing and tracking. It is the
complete commercial package.
Artec is competitive too. There are
other booths out there, but they are not
as sophisticated or as automated and
charge customers more – competitors’
prices for their 3D statues are typically
four to fi ve times more. Artec believes
it offers the best-value, high-quality
scanners, scans and 3D statues on
the market.
It goes without saying that the
Shapify Booths are 100 per cent safe
– they use daylight to scan with, so
there is no radiation. And, of course,
data protection is of paramount
importance. The customer owns
their 3D scan and has the right
to destroy it at any time should
they not want to keep it for
future applications.
However, it’s these
future applications that are
the most exciting part of
personalised 3D scanning
and are why Shapify Booths
don’t just represent a great
business opportunity today,
but will continue to do so in
the future. Over the next fi ve
years there will be so many more ways
for customers to use their 3D scans,
including gaming where they could
use them to create a character within
the game, and online shopping where
fashion retailers could use them to
work out customers’ exact sizes and
recommend clothes accordingly.
Given the demand for shapies already
evident across the world, it seems likely
that there will be at least one Artec
Shapify Booth in every city with half
a million inhabitants or more. It’s a
phenomenon and business opportunity
that’s going to keep on growing. Don’t
miss out.
For more information please visit
www.artec3d.com
As well as being a lot of
fun, Shapify Booths are
a serious, scalable and
profi table business proposition
A boxer and a one-tenth-
scale fi gurine
Image: Artec Group
The Artec Shapify Booth. Image: Artec Group
12 seconds
to take a complete
scan of the
customer
15minutes
to create a
3D-printable
model

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3D PRINTING
11/12/14
EDITION #0291
Consumer
Let’s be frank. The consumer
market for 3D printers is
miles behind the industri-al
sector. Sales are small. Last year
Juniper estimates 44,000 consum-er-
grade devices were sold worldwide.
You can’t buy one in John Lewis. PC
World stocks one solitary model.
Which is on the face of it pret-ty
odd. There is a lot of hype about
consumer 3D printers. In terms of
functionality, these little beauties
are pretty solid. Most melt plastic
filament and build up objects layer
by layer. Make a chess piece or quirky
jewellery item and you are guaran-teed
fine results.
Consumers have lots of choice too.
And the devices on the market look
so fantastic they should be flying off
the shelves.
The RepRap Mini Kossel (£425)
can print largish objects in different
colours, such as vases and screw-driver
handles. You get to build the
printer too and if that doesn’t teach
the inner mysteries of 3D printing
nothing will. The Cubify Cube 3
(£839) extrudes 20 colours and can
print direct from an iPhone, Android
app or special software for Mac or
PC. It’s a cute little box, smaller than
a microwave oven, and will look spec-tacular
in the living room. The Mak-erbot
Mini (£1,200) is superlative
quality, with Batman-esque styling.
The Printrbot Simple Maker (£372)
is astoundingly cheap.
So let’s get one thing clear. In terms
of price, looks and branding, the cur-rent
crop of printers is affordable,
workable and usable. In that case,
why is there such hesitancy in the in-dustry
about the consumer market?
Two reasons. The first is that us-ing
consumer printers isn’t simple.
Crikey, using normal printers isn’t
always simple, as anyone staring at
a flashing message “Load Error 13”
will know. The industry knows that
for something to appeal to all con-sumers,
not just the hardcore maker
community, the devices need to be
foolproof. Consumers don’t want
to listen to technical waffle about
filament compositions and file types.
The second reason is that indus-trial
devices are so versatile that the
consumer range looks a little under-powered
by comparison. The worry
is that it will always lag.
The industry is acutely aware of
these issues. The software issue is be-ing
rapidly resolved. Adobe is updat-ing
Photoshop to support 3D print-ing.
Richard Curtis of Adobe says the
current STL (stereolithography) for-mat
used by most consumer devices
is flawed, but there are fixes arriving.
“Because hardware and material
innovation is progressing so quick-ly,
this format is quickly becoming
out of date for these more advanced
machines,” says Mr Curtis. “The
STL format does not support any
colour in its definition or any secu-rity
and both of these attributes are
becoming more important in today’s
world, particularly for the creative
community as well as businesses
and service providers.”
NEW COMMERCIAL ERA
Adobe Photoshop will read and
write in Universal 3D, part of the 3D
PDF. This can be locked with 256-
bit security. Sounds like a small step,
but it is the sort of progress needed to
take the industry into the new com-mercial
era.
Computer-aided design (CAD)
software makers are trying to do
their bit. Autodesk is the creator of
one of the world’s foremost packag-es,
AutoCAD. The firm is about to
launch its own 3D printer, and more
importantly has created Spark, an
online marketplace for sharing open-sourced
3D hardware and product
designs. Even its new printer will be
entirely open source. Rival makers
will be able to see the designs and use
them. Why would Autodesk do this?
Autodesk maker advocate Jesse Har-rington
Au says: “The bigger the 3D
market the better for us. We haven’t
figured out how to make money from
this, but we figured that, if we open
up the consumer market to 3D, then
that can only help us a company.”
Even if the technical solutions
are there, consumers will still need
to know what they can make. This
isn’t clear, worries Chris Elsworthy,
3D-PRINTING
MARKET OVERVIEW
3D PRINTS BY CATEGORY
founder of the Robox 3D printer
(£850), who says: “The accepted
wisdom is that consumers will em-brace
3D printing when printers are
relatively cheap and very easy to use.
In this case, as in many others, the
accepted wisdom is wrong.
“The price of 3D printers has
already plummeted and ‘plug-and-print’
models like Robox are already
available. In fact, the real problem
for the industry is that consumers
don’t know what they would do
with a 3D printer. Time and again at
trade shows the first question poten-tial
buyers ask me is ‘What would I
print with it?’ Rather than focusing
on the technical smarts of individual
WILL THERE BE
A 3D PRINTER
IN EVERY HOME?
Sales of consumer 3D devices are low
and there are challenges ahead. But the
consumer sector may just have sorted out its
problems, as Charles Orton-Jones reports
45.7% Total compound
annual growth rate
(2013-18)
$3.8bn
machines, 3D printer manufacturers
need to send out the message there
are good reasons to own a printer
and point to the fact that the blue-prints
for hundreds of thousands of
3D objects are already available on-line,
for free.”
One left-field future for consum-er
machines needs mentioning. 3D
food. It sounds bonkers, but is ad-vancing
fast.
The Foodini 3D Printer (£830)
is about to hit the shelves. It uses
five capsules to build food, from
ravioli parcels to abstract shapes.
Consumers can load the capsules
The real problem for the industry is
that consumers don’t know what
they would do with a 3D printer
PROTOTYPES
GADGETS
PHONE ADD-ONS
SCALE MODELS
FASHION
TOYS
REPLACEMENTS
DIY
38%
27%
12%
11%
7%
2%
2%
1%
Source: 3D Hubs, November 2013
GLOBAL 3D-PRINTING MARKET
FORECASTS TO 2018
$2.5bn
2013 2014
15
10
5
0

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Outlook
RISE AND RISE
OF 3D PRINTING
Continued governmental support,
coupled with the UK’s existing
engineering capabilities, should
see 3D printing become a central
manufacturing technology, as
Jim Woodcock reports
In reality “3D printing”
is an umbrella term that
refers to tens of widely
differing technologies, processing
hundreds of materials for thousands
of applications. Tracking such a di-verse
set of tools poses some chal-lenges,
but the overall trend has
been, and continues to be, one of
significant growth. By splitting the
industry into non-professional and
professional sectors, two distinct
stories come to the fore and the
term “additive manufacturing” be-comes
important.
For the consumer getting access
to 3D-printed parts by owning and
running your own 3D printer is an
increasingly viable option as pric-es
tumble and usability increases.
It’s still not an option for the faint
hearted as a significant amount of
skill is required in the digital design,
file processing and finally printing of
a part. Downloading content to print
at home is more accessible and many
repositories – cubify.com, thingi-verse.
com, youmagine.com – cater
for this market.
According to the Wohlers Report
2013, growth in the home 3D-print-er
market averaged 346 per cent
each year from 2008 through 2011.
In 2012, the increase cooled sig-nificantly
to an estimated 46.3 per
cent, though this growth rate is still
exceptional in the hardware sector.
Many services now exist that run
professional 3D printers, normally
out of reach of the average consum-er,
and make them available through
sophisticated online portals. With
this route anyone has the ability to
have parts printed in materials such
as bronze, sterling silver and even
solid gold. Shapeways, i.materialise
and Sculpteo all operate variations
on this model, substantially increas-ing
the possibilities for non-profes-sional
users and reducing the barri-er
to adoption.
Another emerging trend is the use
of networks of home 3D printers to
have parts produced locally, con-trolled
through a central online hub.
This system is increasingly opening
up the consumer-to-business model,
whereby users of 3D printers in their
homes are supplying parts to enter-prises
in a complete reversal of the
normal process.
For the professional side of the
industry, growth is anticipated
from nearly all existing sectors
and from new applications coming
online. Historically, prototyping
applications have dominated 3D
printing use in industry. For near-ly
30 years, 3D-printed parts have
been used in the development of
everything from mobile phones to
cars. Today the major shift is to-wards
using the 3D-printed parts
themselves in the final product,
opening up options of customisa-tion
and design freedom like never
before. Use of 3D printing in this
space is often referred to as addi-tive
manufacturing, though the
terms are becoming increasingly
interchangeable.
3D printing is already changing
lives in the healthcare sector where
the ability to create complex organic
shapes as one-off parts is key to per-sonalised
treatment. Prosthetics, im-plants
and tools that help surgeons
can be created as one-offs, com-pletely
personalised to the patient.
Users of 3D
printers in their
homes are supplying
parts to enterprises in
a complete reversal of
the normal process
Growth for this sector is anticipated
to be high as materials suitable for
use in the body are developed.
The UK has a relatively well-es-tablished
additive-manufacturing
and 3D-printing market with esti-mates
around 4 per cent of the global
total. Government-backed research
in both the public and private sectors
is healthy, though with 38 per cent
of market share, the United States is
leading the development and uptake
of the technologies.
US JAPAN GERMANY
38% 9.7%
CHINA UK
with their own ingredients or buy
pre-made edible materials. Found-er
Lynette Kucsma says: “With
a 3D food printer, you can make
fresh foods faster and easier than
you can by hand or with any other
kitchen appliance.
MAKING 3D FOOD
“Note that our proposition is not
to say that everything you eat should
be 3D printed, just like everything
you eat now doesn’t come out of an
oven. But think about your favourite
packaged foods that you buy, that
if you were to make by hand would
4.2%
9.4%
CANADA
$16.2bn
7%
require forming, shaping or layering,
from simple pretzels or breadsticks,
to ravioli. That’s where 3D food
printers shine.”
Three academics at London
South Bank University, Susana
Soares, Andrew Forkes and Dr
Ken Spears, are working on in-sect-
based 3D foods. Ms Soares
says: “The foods are made by dry-ing
and then grinding insects into
a fine powder. The resulting ‘flour’
is then mixed with other food prod-ucts,
such as icing butter, choco-late,
spices and cream cheese, to
form the right consistency.” Her
reason? “As the population grows,
insects will be a solution to some
food problems.”
Her collaborator Dr Spears adds:
“Mealworms have proved to be quite
useful – you can get a 40 to 50 per
cent protein count. We have then
been turning them into flour, com-bining
that with a fondant paste and
using it in a 3D printer.”
Mealworm burgers printed at
home? Why not? That’s the point
about consumer 3D printers; no one
quite knows what they’ll be used for.
That versatility could turn out to be
their greatest strength.
3D-PRINTING MARKET SHARE
Source: Visual Capitalist
Source: Source: Canalys 2014 Visual Capitalist
8.7%
3D-PRINTING REVENUES
BY END-MARKET
– PRINTING –
2018
22%
19%
10%
13%
5%
4%
4%
Consumer electronics
Automotive
Aerospace
Industrial
Academia
Military
Architecture
Other
3D printers Services and materials
Yearly total across both
1.9%

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3D PRINTING
11/12/14
EDITION #0291
Design Empowerment
THREE
DIMENSIONAL
BY DESIGN
In the suitably dramatic
interior of the University
of the Arts London (UAL)
students are working with clay,
studying vintage copies of Vogue
magazine, hammering away at jew-ellery
benches and spreading out
freshly dyed fabrics on worktops.
Housed in an old granary where
the walls still bear numbering for
various former storage areas, the
university places a strong emphasis
on the practical. Helping students
to focus on how items will look
when they’re actually produced,
rather than simply thinking about
them on the computer screen or
sketch pad is key – and now 3D
printing is making this essential el-ement
of the design process easier
and more accurate than ever.
The use of 3D printing is very
much part of the curriculum, ex-plains
Nicholas Rhodes, programme
director of product, ceramic and
industrial design at Central Saint
Martins, a constituent college
of UAL. “There’s a lot of interest
among students in how it works and
when to apply it,” he says.
The technology is part of a new
empowerment of designers that in-cludes
crowdfunding and a change
in their relationship with industry.
“Young designers are more like-ly
to be partners than servants.
It’s the students themselves who
are really pushing the boundaries
here,” says Mr Rhodes.
Charles Dokk-Olsen of archi-tects
Shepheard Epstein Hunt-er,
whose work includes schools,
housing developments and offices,
says: “3D printing allows us to pro-duce
models with complex geome-try
in minute detail that would be
virtually impossible by hand.” In
one example, the firm used its 3D
printer, which had a price tag of
£30,000, to produce a model of a
balcony for a client, which curves
in two directions to form a wave
around the façade – a difficult mod-el
to create by hand.
“Our practice produces physical
models for nearly every project we
work on because we’ve found that
this is consistently the best way
to communicate ideas to clients
of every age,” says Mr Dokk-Ols-en.
“On our schools work, we
consult with staff as well as pu-pils
as young as five, and all ages
are enthused and excited about
seeing spaces in a physical model
they can move around and explore
over a table.”
TESTING IDEAS
In addition to illustration, 3D
printing is good for testing ideas.
To create Rock on Top of Another
Rock, a sculpture for the Serpentine
Gallery in Hyde Park, consulting
engineers Arup used 3D scanning
and 3D printing to produce exact
physical models of the rocks at one
twentieth of their actual size, ena-bling
them to explore different bal-ance
configurations to find the most
stable, and at the same time realise
the vision of the artist.
Fashion designers are increas-ingly
using 3D printing not just as
a means of creating a prototype for
review, but of manufacturing the
finished product. It also allows them
to work with entirely new materials.
“I feel excited when I test new
materials within the printing, such
as flexible rubber on which I could
print colours or the transparent
glass-like material I used for the
crystal dress in my recent Magnetic
Motion collection,” says Iris van Her-pen,
a Dutch designer who worked
for Alexander McQueen in London
and went on to present her first col-lection
in 2007 in Amsterdam.
FASHION AND ARCHITECTURE
Her cutting-edge approach to
creation, merging science and fan-tasy,
caught the attention of France’s
Chambre Syndicale de la Haute
Couture and she counts Icelandic
performer Bjork among her fans.
Recently, she created the 3D-print-ed
transparent, crystal dress in
collaboration with Niccolo Casas,
an architect whose work combines
fashion and architecture.
In a far more down-to-earth con-text,
designer Sebastian Conran,
who is working with part-work and
collections publisher Eaglemoss
Collections to launch a weekly
magazine that provides readers
with all the components to build
their own 3D printer at home, com-pares
the satisfaction of producing
something tangible offered by 3D
printing with his childhood love of
Meccano and Plasticine.
“It will certainly encourage more
people to think of themselves as de-signers
and to consider doing it as
a career,” he says. “I can imagine a
time in the future when your little
boy might want a bit more track or
a bridge for his model train set and
you’ll just be able to knock one out
yourself on your printer.”
People will be able to create
something on their iPad and then
see the finished product, he pre-dicts.
Although, this will mean de-signers
will have to focus more on
3D printing is transforming the way the creative
industries work by presenting fashion designers,
interior designers and architects with new
opportunities, writes Simon Brooke
Intellectual
Property
Page 12
People will be able to create
something on their iPad and
then see the finished product

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3D PRINTING ONLINE:
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Y Case Study
PRINTING DRESSES AFTER A FASHION
their computer-coding skills.
At the London College of Fash-ion,
jewellery students are using
silver and gold in 3D -printing
machines to create products. “We
have students who are working
on creating materials that are like
fabrics with 3D printing; they’re
inspired by what people such as
Lady Gaga have done,” says Lynne
Murray, director of the Fashion
Digital Studio at the College. “At
some point, they’ll be able to print
bio materials and cosmetics such
as face creams.”
However, Mr Rhodes at Central
Saint Martins sounds a note of cau-tion
to both professional designers
and enthusiastic lay people. “Stu-dents
get very excited about the
idea of going from screen to 3D,
but you still need good design skills
and the technology isn’t right for
everything,” he says. “When desk-top
publishing came out some years
ago, lots of people thought that we’d
all become graphic designers, but
that didn’t happen. You still need
skill and training – and, of course,
there’s no substitute for talent.”
Z
Francis Bitonti is at the forefront
of the 3D revolution in fashion.
The architect turned designer
founded his eponymous fashion
label in 2007 and teaches
at London’s Ravensbourne
College in Greenwich.
“When I first came across 3D
printing it blew my mind and
seemed to invert everything
I knew about design,” says
the 31 year old who is based
in New York. “It’s been very
much a driver for my creativity.
I use it the way that a painter
uses paint. What I love the
most about it is the flexibility.
It allows you to work with very
complex geometry.”
Bitonti’s most famous design
to date is a 3D dress for the
burlesque artist Dita von Teese.
Made from more than 3,000
moving parts each of which is
0.5mm thick, the dress required
von Teese to climb into a corset
that was then used to create an
image from which the three-di-mensional
“print” was made.
Black, severe and fetishistic, it’s
adorned with more than 12,000
Swarovski crystals.
Doesn’t something that makes
his work so easy actually
detract from his skill as a de-signer?
Couldn’t anyone now do
it? “I’ve been asking myself this
question,” he says. “Am I put-ting
myself out of job? It’s a bit
like the situation with the music
industry when people started
being able to download tracks.
You have to adapt quickly to the
new technology.”
Next year the Francis Bitonti
studio will launch a luxury col-lection,
introducing 3D printing
into a sector where exclusivity,
craftsmanship and high price
are watchwords – and many of
the things that this new tech-nology
pushes against.
Bitonti sees the irony. “This kind
of manufacturing is the oppo-site
of luxury because it’s about
easy distribution and ubiquity,”
he says. “I’m aiming at the
millennials, women who have
grown up with access to luxury
brands. But they’re looking for
opportunities to contribute
here, such as co-creation.”
How the big names of Bond
Street and Fifth Avenue will
react to the arrival of a new-comer
who allows customers
to “print” their own luxury
clothes, bags and jewellery
remains to be seen.
Image: Francis Bitonti

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3D PRINTING
11/12/14
EDITION #0291
Intellectual Property
It’s a transformative tech-nology
that’s shaking up
the manufacturing world.
3D printing, or additive manufac-turing
as it is known in its industrial
application, has the potential to allow
anyone with computer-aided design
(CAD) files, a 3D printer and printing
materials, typically plastic and metal
powders, to make products and com-ponents
wherever they are based.
But while there are many effi-ciency
benefits, there is one thorny
issue that companies, lawyers and
governments are only just beginning
to grapple with: the intellectual prop-erty
(IP) issues raised by 3D printing.
If the technology allows anyone to
make anything anywhere, how can
companies, designers and inventors
protect their IP rights?
Design rights protect the shape
and the way products are configured.
These split into four: UK and EU
registered designs last for 25 years
and require the filing of a design; UK
unregistered design rights last ten to
fifteen years and this is automatic as
long as the design is original and not
solely functional; EU unregistered
design rights last three years and are
also automatic if the design is new
and individual.
Trademarks are effectively used
to protect a company’s brand. Pat-ents
protect how an invention, which
must be novel and inventive, works.
Copyright protects literary, artistic,
musical and dramatic 2D works, as
well as some 3D works such as statues.
In the industrial sector, existing IP
protection law means that replicating
products for commercial gain, by any
means including, by association, 3D
printing is, on the whole, illegal. Un-der
patent law, for example, printing
or disseminating copied products for
monetary gain is an infringement and
the printer could be sued.
The same is true for design
rights, although where 3D printing
is used to make spare parts the law
is less favourable for rights holders.
Design features that enable one
product to be functionally fitted or
aesthetically matched to another
are specifically excluded from pro-tection
and can be copied.
TRADEMARK LAW
In terms of trademark law, it is an
infringement to apply the trademark
to copied items and sell them with it
on. Copyright law protects items
that fulfil the classification criteria
– again, it is an infringement to copy
something that is rights-protected,
and not just for commercial gain.
In terms of consumer 3D printing,
the copying of products is generally
allowed as long as it’s for personal use
and not for monetary gain. Under pat-ent
law, for instance, it is legal to print
patented goods at home for personal
use. Design rights and trademark laws
are not broken if someone is printing
a product for their own use.
Copyright law has recently
changed. It used to be an infringe-ment
for a consumer to copy an ar-tistic
work by printing a replica with-out
permission from the copyright
owner, for both commercial and
private use. Because, in reality, this
was flouted all the time – copying a
CD, for example – the government
brought in the Copyright and Rights
in Performances (Personal Copies
for Private Use) Regulations 2014
on October 1 this year. This means
it is now legal for a person to print a
copy of, say, an item of copyrighted
handcrafted jewellery that they have
purchased for private, non-commer-cial
use. They could not print it off
for a friend without infringing cop-yright,
however.
Manufacturers are facing similar
issues to those the music industry
faced a few years ago. The advent
of digital music made it simple to
share songs with friends without
buying them. Initially, the music
industry tried to fight it, using the
law to close down file-sharing sites
and suing some individuals who
were sharing music. This strategy
became expensive, unenforceable
and a public relations disaster,
so the industry changed tack and
embraced new business models,
which have made buying music for
a nominal fee more attractive than
illegal file-sharing.
While, currently, the quality of
home 3D printing is arguably not
yet good enough to replicate prod-ucts
of the same quality, precision
and durability as the originals, that
time will come – in about ten years,
according to some experts.
Legal action is starting to hit
the courts already, though. In the
United States, Thomas Valenty
used printed copies of Games
Workshop’s Warhammer range and
uploaded the files to Thingiverse,
a 3D printing file-sharing site.
Games Workshop won the case
against Thingiverse, which had to
remove the file, by complaining
that Mr Velenty’s designs infringed
its IP rights.
NEW BUSINESS MODELS
The manufacturing sector has a
decision to make: whether to vigor-ously
protect IP rights through the
courts, as the music industry did,
and risk annoying its customers or
embrace new business models.
“With 3D printing, the problem
is not so much about infringement
of your IP rights, it’s more about
the increasing competition,” says
Ludmila Striukova, a senior lectur-er
of innovation management at
University College London. “Any-one
can now become a designer
and a maker. This is what compa-nies
should be worried about.”
In this context, some see a sole
or primary focus on protecting IP
rights as misguided. The thinking
is that, if manufacturers embrace
3D printing as an opportunity,
they could head off IP infringe-ment
before it becomes a problem.
“Businesses need to work out how
to engage with private 3D printers
in a way they can start to monetise,”
says Adam Rendle, senior associate at
law firm Taylor Wessing. “They could
build additional relationships with
their customers by supplying addi-tional
products and services, such as
CAD designs, printing and printing
materials. If companies have a legit-imate
offering that’s good enough,
there won’t be as much incentive for
people to infringe IP rights.”
3D printing or copying poses potential
problems for manufacturers and
designers anxious to protect their rights,
but could be an opportunity rather than
a threat, as Flemmich Webb reports
Home 3D printing
of patented or
trademarked items
is lawful if it is for
personal use
Under patent law, printing or
disseminating copied products for
monetary gain is an infringement and
the printer could be sued
WHO IS IN
THE RIGHT? Image: Alamy

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3D PRINTING
11/12/14
EDITION #0000
Commercial Feature
At the forefront of
reshaping industry
Industrial 3D printing, pioneered by
EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems,
is transforming the way major
companies make things
One such customer is Munich-based
MTU Aero Engines, Germany’s leading en-gine
manufacturer. In May, MTU became
one of the first companies in the world to
create components for production en-gines
using additive manufacturing tech-niques.
The company, employing EOS
hardware, manufactures “bosses” as
part of turbine casings to allow the easy
inspection of blades for wear and damage
with a borescope when required.
MTU used to make these parts by
casting or milling them from solid metal.
Now it uses lasers to melt and fuse metal
powder into 20 to 40 micrometre-thick
layers, which are built on top of one an-other
until the entire component is com-pleted.
This technique allows MTU to
manufacture complex components that
would be very difficult, if not impossible,
to make using conventional methods,
and uses fewer raw materials and tools.
The company only produces small num-bers
of borescope bosses at the moment,
but once production of the PW1100G-JM
engine, used to power the A320neo air-craft,
ramps up from 2015 onwards, its
output will increase substantially.
Other clients include Siemens In-dustrial
Turbomachinery, for which
EOS adapted one of its in-house
machines for metal printing so the
Swedish-based company could more
easily and efficiently repair and im-prove
components in its gas turbines.
Conventional repairs required prefab-rication
of big sections of the turbines’
burner tips, which need replacing over
time. Additive manufacturing meant
Siemens could remove and mend the
damaged material instead of replac-ing
the whole unit. At the same time,
the technology allowed engineers to
rebuild damaged burners according
to the latest design, thereby repairing
and improving them.
Bego USA operates in an entirely
different field, but also uses EOS tech-nology.
It makes dentistry products –
everything from simple fillings to crowns,
bridgework and implants. Due to a num-ber
of factors, including the price of gold
and competitive overseas labour costs,
the company wanted to move away from
traditional manufacturing methods and
approached EOS to help it do so. Bego
now makes its dental restoration prod-ucts
using industrial 3D printing – EOS’s
first application of the technique in the
dentistry sector.
EOS’s additive manufacturing tech-nology
is changing the way companies
manufacture and replace products and
components. Not only does industrial
3D printing reduce customers’ design
and tooling costs, its capacity to cre-ate
products with complex geometries
results in lighter goods that use fewer
resources. In industries such as aero-space
where weight saving is critical,
this can mean substantial energy and
therefore operational cost-savings over
product lifetimes.
In a world of increasing resource scar-city,
there are sustainability benefits to
additive manufacturing, too. Relative
to conventional processes, it is an ex-tremely
efficient use of resources and,
because it is powder-based, has a high
reusability percentage. “The world has
to become more efficient in what it uses
or reuses. That’s a big boost for indus-trial
3D printing because that’s one of
its core advantages over conventional
manufacturing,” says Mr Jackson.
Although it is a relatively young mar-ket,
EOS already has a wealth of expe-rience
and knowledge, both of which
it intends to build upon to maintain its
position as the sector’s market leader.
“Our focus is and will continue to be on
the aerospace, medical and engineer-ing
sectors – that is where we see the
growth happening, and where we are
concentrating all our resources, and re-search
and development activity,” says
Mr Jackson.
“Industrial 3D printing will not com-pletely
replace traditional manufacturing;
it will complement it and lead to numer-ous
business opportunities. EOS is proud
to be at the forefront of this new era.”
It started out as rapid prototyping –
a fast way of creating industrial pro-totypes
to guide product and tooling
design. Now, 40 years on, industrial
3D printing, or additive manufactur-ing
as it is also known, has evolved
to become one of the boom sectors
of the past decade.
3D printing is the process of building
successive layers of, typically, metal or
plastics to create three-dimensional ob-jects.
But while it is the idea of printing
objects at home – jewellery, toys, even
chocolate – that has caught the public
imagination, it is industrial 3D printing
that is driving growth and innovation in
the global marketplace.
EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems, a
privately owned German company found-ed
by Dr Hans J. Langer in 1989, is at
the forefront of a transformative industry
that is revolutionising traditional product
manufacture and design.
EOS, headquartered in Krailling, Ger-many,
supplies industrial 3D printers,
high-performance plastics and metal
powders (to print with), software, and
technical and consulting services to a
wide range of blue-chip customers, in-cluding
aerospace, medical, automotive
and engineering companies.
Currently the leading direct metal
laser sintering (DMLS) company in the
sector, selling five times more industrial
3D printers than its competitors, and
one of the leading players in the plas-tics
sector, EOS’s growth since 2002
has been impressive. Gross sales have
risen to €177 million in 2013-14, while
staff numbers increased from 162
in 2002 to 541 in 2014. Ninety new
employees joined this year, with the re-cruitment
of approximately 100 more
planned for 2015. It now has 11 offices
across the world, and recently opened
a new technology and customer centre
in Krailling.
So how has it managed such sus-tained
and vigorous growth? Technical
expertise, a commitment to constantly
improving its products and services,
and its focus on a specific market seg-ment,
says Stuart Jackson, regional
manager at EOS. “We are an engineer-ing-
based company with engineers and
scientists at its core, plus we invest
heavily in research and development –
our standard annual reinvestment rate
is 15 per cent,” he says. “And we offer
industrial 3D printing/additive manu-facturing
exclusively to high-end, blue-chip
customers.”
1. Manufacturing
procoess of dental
crowns. Image: EOS
2. Boroscope eye.
Image: MTU
EOS’s additive manufacturing
technology is changing the
way companies manufacture and
Dental building platform. Image: EOS replace products and components

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3D PRINTING
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EDITION #0291
PA 0000
Commercial Feature
Designed for
a 3D world
Whether helping create coffee advertised by George Clooney or
research for life on Mars, the 3D printer is fast becoming ubiquitous,
wherever speed, efficiency and accuracy matter, says Stratasys
From product design studios, engi-neering
departments and manufac-turing
plants, to schools, hospitals
and dental labs, the next industrial
revolution has clearly arrived.
For solutions providers at the forefront
of this game-changing technology, appe-tite
for uptake of 3D printing in the UK is
proving spectacular, as Andy Middleton,
general manager, Europe, the Middle
East and Africa, at Stratasys, explains:
“For us, the UK is the fastest-developing
and largest market in Europe, showing
70 per cent year-on-year growth.
“The 3D-printing revolution really
seems to have taken off in the UK, re-thinking
the way people work and play,
from corporations to consumers, manu-facturers
to makers.”
PRECISION PERFORMANCE
Stratasys is a world leader in the man-ufacture
of 3D printing equipment and
materials that create physical objects
directly from digital data. Its systems
range from affordable desktop 3D print-ers
to large, advanced 3D-production
systems, making 3D printing more ac-cessible
than ever. Its clients range from
Nespresso to Nasa.
Manufacturers use 3D printers to cre-ate
models and prototypes for new prod-uct
design and testing, as well as to build
finished goods in low volume. Educators
use the technology to elevate research
and learning in science, engineering,
design and art. Hobbyists and entrepre-neurs
use it to expand manufacturing
into the home, creating gifts, novelties,
customised devices and inventions.
All Stratasys 3D Printers build parts
layer by layer:
■ FDM (fused deposition model-ling)
technology, known for its
reliability and durable parts,
extrudes fine lines of molten
thermoplastic, which solidify as
they are deposited;
■ PolyJet technology, known for
its smooth, detailed surfaces
and ability to combine multiple
materials in one part, employs
an inkjet-style method to build
parts from liquid photopolymers
in fine droplets immediately
cured with ultraviolet light; and
■ WDM (wax deposition model-ling)
technology produces finely
detailed wax-ups for investment
casting, particularly in dental
applications.
Though the mix of material, geometry,
finish and colour may differ with every
user requirement, the essentials of 3D
printing remain the same: precision, po-tential
and performance.
INNOVATION AND ASSURANCE
Commercial clients are turning to 3D
printing to help them work more efficient-ly
and expand production possibilities,
while still achieving ultimate final-prod-uct
realism. Customers are seeking
competitive advantage, demanding a
combination of cutting-edge technology
and high-quality performance.
Unique to Stratasys, triple-jetting
technology is PolyJet 3D printing at its
most advanced. Not only does this pro-duce
the most sophisticated multima-terial
prototypes and parts, but it offers
surprising workflow benefits.
For mixed parts, it can reduce or elim-inate
the need for assembly, even when
building as many as 82 distinct material
properties into a single part in one au-tomated
job. Complex products can be
prototyped with flexible, rigid, colourful,
translucent and opaque components
just by hitting “print”.
However, for 3D printing to deliver ful-ly
on the promises of production teams
made to colleagues in the board room,
such technological innovation needs to
come with a level of business assurance,
says Mr Middleton. “Being ahead of the
game is almost de rigueur for any suc-cessful
technology company, but what
the market wants is innovation, not risk.
As the only company to have achieved
material certification fit for the aero-space
sector, we understand the need
for assurance, too.
“3D printing is a serious business,
with big plans. This combination of in-novation
and assurance is critical for in-vestors,
and industry seeking a trusted
technology partner.”
ACCESSIBILITY
While talk of the latest technology
may be exciting for growth prospects
in production terms, it does not tell the
whole story.
The future of 3D printing is about
much more than just kit. In effect, it is
not so much the “what” that matters, as
the “who”, “when” and “where”.
Access and availability are the mul-tiplying
factors that will leapfrog the
process forward, faster and further into
the mainstream. As with many develop-ments
in the digital economy, portals and
cloud-based solutions will therefore prove
global market-makers for 3D printing.
Stratasys is again in the vanguard of
current developments in this connec-tive
and creative space, via its Brook-lyn-
based subsidiary MakerBot, which
maintains the Thingiverse design-shar-ing
community.
The implications of a widespread
upsurge imminent in access and avail-ability
are enormous for 3D printing, and
will both complement and accelerate
the way the world of work is changing
as a whole, concludes Mr Middleton.
“This virtual ecosystem for 3D printing
will bring together the greatest number
of people and diversity of global users,
with maximum flexibility in terms of time
and place,” he says.
“Collaborative working is the way
forward for manufacturing, and the ex-plosion
of access and availability in the
3D-printing industry will both feed and
speed that change. We are all in the
business of co-creation now.”
Stratasys is a
world leader in the
manufacture of 3D printing
equipment and materials that
create physical objects directly
from digital data
NASA CASE STUDY
3D PRINTED FOR LIFE ON MARS
An agile white vehicle roams the
Arizona desert, manoeuvring the
unforgiving terrain as the wind
and sun beat down and temper-atures
swing from one extreme
to another. Nasa astronauts and
engineers are test-driving a rov-er
over rocks and sand, up and
down hills in an environment that
simulates the brutal conditions
of Mars.
To design such a tenacious and
specialised vehicle, Nasa drew on
ingenuity and advanced technology.
About 70 of the parts that make up
the rover were built digitally, directly
from computer designs, in the heat-ed
chamber of a production-grade
Stratasys 3D Printer. The process of
FDM technology, or additive manu-facturing,
creates complex shapes
durable enough for Martian terrain.
1.
2.
3.
Objet500
Connex3 with
coloured helmets
3D-printed model
of football helmet
Fortus 3D
Production System
Andy Middleton
General manager, EMEA
Stratasys

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Opinion
PRINTING THE FUTURE WITH
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
The ability to grow a three-di-mensional
object by print-ing
hundreds of micro-scopically
thin layers of material is
already revolutionising some indus-trial
processes and could well become
one of the most dramatic shifts in
manufacturing since the advent of
mass production. Little wonder the
government is investing so much in
supporting the development of addi-tive
manufacturing methods.
The technology is already in use in
manufacturing, producing low-cost
pre-production prototypes or mak-ing
the tools and fixtures to support
conventional manufacturing meth-ods,
dramatically reducing prod-uct-
development cost and lead times.
But that is just the tip of the ice-berg.
The real impact of this tech-nology
is felt when it is used to make
end-use products. At the moment
there are only a few examples of
real additive part production. These
include high-performance medical
devices and aerospace parts. Howev-er,
the possibilities are endless. We
are already starting to see examples
of additive manufacture of custom-ised
dolls, footwear, clothes, food
and even full-sized buildings.
It’s no exaggeration to say that al-most
every field of human endeav-our,
from how we travel, to what we
make and use in everyday life, to
what we eat, to how we treat injury
or illness is likely to be touched by
this revolutionary technology.
The strength and integrity of
components and products made
by additive manufacturing often
exceeds that of conventionally
produced parts. Complex shapes
and structures can be made with
no joints or weaknesses. Imagine
a bicycle made as a single structure
with no welds or brazed joints, just
a seamless tubular structure.
NEW ENTREPRENEURS
Additive manufacturing enables
parts which are too complex to be
produced using existing manufac-turing
techniques to be made at
the touch of a button. This is giving
designers unrivalled freedom, un-locking
their creativity and fostering
a new generation of entrepreneurs
able to explore new market oppor-tunities
without the high barriers to
entry associated with conventional
manufacturing.
Moreover, it is possible to make a
single part which is composed of sev-eral
materials, each printed precise-ly
where required to give the desired
properties. This ability to design the
material at the same time as design-ing
the shape is a unique characteris-tic
of additive manufacturing which
will keep the best material scientists
in the UK busy for decades to come.
But these concepts are for the fu-ture
and there’s still work to be done
in terms of quality assurance, materi-als
development and product testing,
as well as increasing the speed of the
additive manufacturing process to
support higher-volume production.
It could be years or even decades
before the full capabilities of ad-ditive
manufacturing are properly
understood. But in the here and now
it is having an impact on some of the
more mundane aspects of produc-tion,
and it is here where early wins
can be achieved in cost of production,
time saved and materials not wasted.
It is vital that industry exploits the
technology currently available, as
well as planning for the future.
Additive manufacture was first
identified as a viable process back in
the mid-1980s, but it is only recently
that its enormous potential has be-gun
to be understood. It started out
as a tool for rapidly producing mod-els
and prototypes of new products,
but it has evolved into a method of
producing end-use parts.
There can be no doubt that, even
at its most basic, it has significant
advantages over conventional manu-facturing
methods. Unlike formative
processes, such as casting, pressing
or moulding, it does not require ex-pensive
tooling and unlike subtrac-tive
methods, such as milling, turn-ing
or grinding, it produces very little
material waste, and there is virtually
no penalty for complexity.
The driver for continued develop-ment
of this exciting technology is
coming largely from the aerospace
sector. The industry is under enor-mous
pressure to comply with strict-er
environmental regulation, as well
as the obvious requirement to stay
competitive in a rapidly expanding
market. This is driving the need for
a step-change in materials and com-ponent
design as producers strive for
higher-performance materials at ex-treme
temperature, reduced weight
and improved fuel efficiency.
A solution is the use of additive
manufacture for complex metal
parts and, more recently, ceramic
parts which can withstand higher
temperatures.
GROUNDBREAKING TECHNIQUES
At the Manufacturing Technol-ogy
Centre, near Coventry – an ac-knowledged
world leader in additive
technology and now the home of the
National Additive and Net Shape
Manufacturing Centre – we are do-ing
groundbreaking work in this field
with our partners from industry and
academia. As part of the High Value
Manufacturing Catapult – a network
of technology centres established by
the government in 2011 – our role is
to ensure that new manufacturing
techniques are commercialised and
exploited in the UK.
The technology has the capa-bility
to save millions of pounds
in product-development and
manufacturing costs, as well as
providing an efficient route to re-manufacture
of damaged or worn
parts which would previously have
been scrapped.
Developing any product is an
expensive business, but additive
technology can take a huge bite out
of the most expensive parts of the
process – prototyping and tooling.
Low-volume tooling production by
traditional methods is a major part
of the product-development cost, so
the advantages of being able to print
tools which perform more efficient-ly
using additive manufacturing are
clear. And the benefits of printing
parts on demand can be reaped if
you’re working in a metal-bashing
factory in the Midlands or on a space
station orbiting the Earth.
The imagination doesn’t have to
go far to see wider benefits in oth-er
applications. The possibilities
of the technology in our hospitals
are already being studied. 3D an-atomical
models are helping sur-geons
plan complex operations,
saving the NHS millions of pounds
each year and improving patient
treatment. The potential to print
replacement organs may seem far-fetched,
but additive manufacture
is key to some major breakthroughs
in tissue engineering.
Although these concepts may
seem like science fiction now, it is
important for industry not to lose
sight of the current applications of
a technology which is undoubtedly
here to stay. The tipping point will be
when additive manufacture moves
into mainstream manufacturing,
with machines capable of volume
production. It will come and it rep-resents
a significant challenge to the
manufacturing sector – but it also
brings limitless opportunities.
It’s no exaggeration to
say that almost every field
of human endeavour is
likely to be touched by this
revolutionary technology
Ask most people what they think of
when they hear the term “additive
manufacturing” and, if they think of
anything at all, it will probably be
a 3D-printed plastic curio from
a digital design, says David
Wimpenny, chief technologist at the
Manufacturing Technology Centre