Our clients are proving on daily basis that elements produced with additive manufacturing can meet stringent manufacturing requirements throughout aerospace, medical, robotics and client items sectors.
The measurable outcomes they see together with quicker cycles, decrease prices, lowered danger and verified high quality are the actual drivers, not the know-how itself. And these are usually not speculative advantages however are documented outcomes drawn from hundreds of producing runs, design iterations and field-tested elements.
Right here we’ll share some anonymised case research exploring how our digital manufacturing platform interprets design freedom into production-grade outcomes.
Aerospace: From prototype to flight in weeks
One aerospace producer creating electrical plane wanted to design light-weight buildings that would face up to aerodynamic masses whereas remaining serviceable in harsh outside situations. Conventional tooling would have meant six-figure funding and months of delay.
By shifting to additive manufacturing manufacturing for structural and non-critical elements, the engineering workforce lowered design-to-flight time by greater than 40%. Every plane now integrates between 60 and 80 additively manufactured elements, together with housings, brackets, interface panels and sensor mounts all produced utilizing laser-sintered nylon and MJF PA12.
Over lots of of flight hours, none of those printed elements have proven degradation inside design masses. The corporate’s lead engineer put it plainly: 3D printing has change into “as routine as machining, however quicker, lighter and simpler to validate.”
For aerospace initiatives the place certification and reliability rule each choice, that shift marks a real transformation: iterative engineering with out compromise.
Healthcare: Scaling innovation, defending belongings
In hospital environments, reliability is life-critical. A medical-equipment provider confronted recurring failures in cable administration programs that triggered downtime, questions of safety and value leakage. They labored with Shapeways to design a easy however sturdy 3D printed retention gadget — sufficiently small to miss, however highly effective sufficient to stop six-figure losses yearly.
Inside months, the provider had deployed over a thousand models, every digitally manufactured on demand from validated, biocompatible supplies. The outcome: a projected $1 million in tools belongings protected and near-zero alternative delays.
Elsewhere within the medical area, a design workforce creating robotic-surgery coaching programs used additive manufacturing to reinvent the way in which surgeons be taught delicate procedures. Their problem was to simulate complicated, dexterous motions with out counting on costly cadaver or artificial fashions.
Utilizing selective laser sintering (SLS), the workforce created lots of of modular elements, colour-coded and nested for environment friendly builds, and examined by way of fast iteration. The result was a completely modular coaching platform that might be reconfigured for a number of talent ranges and shipped globally with out tooling. The designers estimate that Shapeways’ rapid-prototyping functionality reduce their improvement time by greater than half — and opened new potentialities for data-driven medical schooling.
{Hardware} & Robotics: Manufacturing on the velocity of innovation
In high-tech {hardware} improvement, time is the enemy of innovation. A robotics startup specialising in micro-manufacturing programs wanted to overtake a precision pick-and-place mechanism that wasn’t performing reliably. Early makes an attempt at in-house additive manufacturing manufacturing lacked precision and mechanical energy; injection moulding was cost-prohibitive.
Shapeways produced the redesigned element in PA12, delivering superior rigidity and constant tolerances. The half dealt with twice the payload of the unique model, and the workforce moved from prototype to manufacturing in days as an alternative of weeks.
That single enchancment cascaded by way of the corporate’s improvement cycle, enabling quicker iteration and higher-quality finish merchandise. The identical companion moved on to supply almost all manufacturing elements by way of Shapeways’ certified manufacturing community, citing repeatability, dimensional accuracy and velocity of supply as decisive components.
Client & Design: Scaling bespoke manufacturing
Designers and client manufacturers are equally demanding in aesthetics, precision and consistency. One luxury-goods studio makes use of Shapeways’ metallic and polymer printing to create algorithmically generated jewelry items which might be every distinctive however manufactured with sub-millimetre repeatability.
One other designer working a web-based storefront scales world gross sales by way of Shapeways’ automated fulfilment: each order is printed, completed and shipped underneath their model, with no bodily stock or tooling value. In each instances, the flexibility to maneuver seamlessly from one-off creation to steady manufacturing is redefining the economics of bespoke manufacturing.
Their frequent denominator shouldn’t be creative expression however manufacturing reliability utilising the identical high quality programs, inspection processes and traceability that energy Shapeways’ industrial clients.
Throughout Industries: The metrics of contemporary manufacturing
Whereas all of those instances differ, the outcomes share a typical sample:
- 20–50% quicker improvement cycles by way of fast iteration and digital validation
- Zero tooling funding and near-zero bodily stock, due to on-demand manufacturing
- Repeatable high quality and dimensional accuracy throughout batches and supplies
- Scalable workflows that reach from prototype to serial manufacturing with out course of change
These are the metrics that outline next-generation {hardware} manufacturing: not hypothetical future states, however measurable, repeatable efficiency achieved on daily basis by Shapeways’ clients.
Turning proof into partnership
The shift from 3D printing as a novelty to additive manufacturing manufacturing as infrastructure has been ongoing for a few years. Producers ought to now not ask whether or not it’s potential to print end-use elements; they need to search the quickest path to integrating them into manufacturing.
Behind each prototype or half is a partnership constructed on high quality assurance, supplies experience and manufacturing self-discipline. That’s what permits firms from startups to world OEMs to innovate quicker with out sacrificing reliability.
