How to Reduce Production Cost with Additive Manufacturing

As a manufacturer, you are always looking for ways to reduce your production costs. The latest solution you may be considering is 3D printing / additive manufacturing. In this white paper learn how 3D printing reduces manufacturing cost with the latest materials and techniques.

More manufacturing companies are rapidly adopting 3D printing. Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) includes 3D printing among the “essential eight” technologies poised to have the largest impact across multiple industries. In a 2020 article, PwC noted that the worldwide pandemic only hastened the adoption of these technologies, with manufacturing being an area of concentration for 3D printing.

Advanced, high strength polymers

Further augmenting 3D printing’s role in manufacturing is the continued emergence of new, non-metal materials. Advanced, high strength polymers are already available and employed in mission critical applications. With continued development, 3D printing adoption and applications will continue to grow, challenging years of incremental improvements in conventional manufacturing.

Another way to look at this is by taking the limited view of 3D printing’s capability for manufacturing, your company is being left behind, to the benefit of your competition. That fact was echoed in a 2016 Forbes article quoting an astute CEO of a leading Midwest industrial equipment manufacturer. The CEO recognized her company needed to disrupt itself before the market did, by relying on advanced technologies like 3D printing.

Manufacturers of discrete products employing 3D printing technology with high-performance materials are moving faster than competition and realizing time and cost efficiencies that non-3DP adopters aren’t. These are documented facts, exhibited in this white paper.

Why you should consider 3D printing to reduce costs

To help you assess your current assumptions about the impact 3D printing can have on manufacturing, consider the following questions:

1. How much would your production efficiency increase and costs decrease with more effective and quickly replaceable tools and manufacturing aids?
2. Would the adoption of high-performance materials provide new opportunities to decrease cost by replacing metal parts and/or tools with lighter yet strong 3D printed alternatives?
3. How much would functional rapid prototyping with high-strength materials decrease your product development cycle and how much would that decrease your costs and accelerate time to revenue?

If you’ve tried 3D printing with desktop printers, have you assessed their true cost in terms of reliability, repeatability and build quality, in comparison to 3D printers designed for manufacturing?

The reality is that Stratasys FDM® 3D printing technology provides easy, effective solutions for the typical challenges manufacturers face every day:

• Reducing cost
• Improving production efficiency
• Minimizing lead times and delays

This white paper will highlight examples of these solutions and show you how small to large manufacturers benefit from 3D printing technology.