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At Formnext 2023, the TCT content team asked the question: "What is the biggest challenge in 3D printing that isn't talked about enough?" The interviewees gave a range of answers from different perspectives across the industry, with some focusing on it from a technical side, and some calling for a change in mindset when approaching adoption.
Andrew Sink – Senior Applications Engineer, Carbon
“The biggest challenge in 3D printing that isn’t talked about enough would be understanding the performance benefits of a 3D printed part, I think it’s a really appealing idea to take something that exists and 3D print it, but unless you really understand why 3D printing can provide an advantage, it can be a little bit of a challenge.”
Kartik Rao – Strategic Marketing Director, Additive Industries
“Scaling up production without needing loads of people.”
Frederic Larouche – General Manager, GE Additive
“It takes a lot of validation to go into production, and this is something that is costly and takes a lot of time.”
Francesco Pantaleone – Executive Vice President of Business Development, Roboze
“Change is always a level of resistance that we need to fight. In order to fight it, you need to create exponential value for the end user, to make sure that negative differentiator of change, is offset by the value they are getting out of your solutions. Of course, change means cost, a change of process or a change of material, for engineering environments that leads to cost and risk, and no engineer in their sane mind will do that, unless you can prove that there is exponentially more value in the solution you are proposing. So doing a better job in really crystallising what is the value that your solution can bring into that specific application.”
Norbert Gall – Head of Marketing and PR, Lithoz
“I think the biggest challenge in 3D printing is probably to show the world that we are actually really doing a good and healthy business, but of course it’s not possible in most of the cases because of the NDAs.”
David Moodie – Founder and CEO, Foundry Lab
“I think it’s hitting production qualities or properties, I think making a part that’s got a nebulous structural property is a bit of an issue for production.”
Monica Smith – Product Line Manager Metal Systems, EOS
“I think still, post processing.”
Cora Leibig – Founder and CEO, Chromatic 3D Materials
“The biggest challenge is definitely that we’re asking customers to do a material change.”
Joel Telling – 3D Printing Nerd
“The biggest challenge within 3D printing, I think right now, is just popularisation of the technology within fields that are traditional that aren’t using additive. I think what’s going on now is we’ve got 3D printing to a place at least on the industrial side that qualified, good parts can be made for the automotive and the airline industry, and the ability for 3D printing to make more of that is just to change the general mindset around additive and to show people that it is a mature technology now that can create qualified good parts.”
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
