Drop the mic, exit stage left. Have I convinced you?”
3T AM CEO Dan Johns has stopped speaking. For now.
He stands in the 3T AM production facility, not on a stage and not with a microphone – yet – but he’s doing a lot of convincing. Johns has already spent a couple of hours articulating why 3T considers additive manufacturing as a tool for outputting billets rather than parts, and now his attention is turning to how the company will achieve Net Zero status by 2032.
But before he continues, a pit stop to make sure his audience is keeping pace. Is it making sense? Are there any questions? Do you believe?
Of course, none of that really matters, so long as Johns, his colleagues, and 3T’s customers are on the same page. And it seems, such is the health of the company’s books these days, that they are. Johns freely admits that he’s no carbon accounting expert, but he won’t ignore what’s working.
The phrase Net Zero followed by a number in the relatively early 2000s is a common goal in the 21st century for companies and countries alike. The magic number for the UK, for example, is 2050. For 3T AM, it’s 2032 – ten years on from the new management’s first year at the helm of the company.
Ten years, it was felt, would be a good runway. Far enough into the future for it to seem realistic, but soon enough to focus minds. “We’re not doing it because of external forces, customer directives, legislative targets, we’re doing it because we believe in it,” Johns says. “Now that the legislation is consolidating and customers’ CSR and ESG agendas are strengthening, it has become a perfect storm.”
3T AM has seen staff – whether they’re 30 minutes into their career or 30 years – fully engage with these efforts. Meanwhile,
clients like Rolls Royce are said to have noted how, merely by having a vision, 3T AM is ahead of many of its other suppliers when it comes to achieving Net Zero.
That vision is being enacted already. From the installation of LED lighting to the incorporation of renewable energy, to the electric van, to its lean manufacturing philosophy, 3T AM is already making strides towards its 2032 goal.
Metal additive manufacturing technology is proving quite important to those ambitions. As documented in the previous issue of TCT Magazine, earlier in his career, Johns commissioned studies into the potential of additive manufacturing to deliver reductions in mining, feedstock, and machining. One study assessing the additive manufacture of an Airbus A350 bracket found three times less of the former, thirteen times less of the latter, and five times of the one in between.
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Johns has now applied the same maths to the 10,000 components 3T AM is contracted to manufacture throughout 2024. If each of those components was made the traditional way, machining from a billet of material, 3T AM would create 45,000 kilogrammes of waste. Using AM to produce a billet at near-net shape that will then be machined? It’s just 1,000 kilogrammes. In terms of mining, it’s 13,000 tonnes of rocks that need to be extracted compared to 45 tonnes.
“I’ve normalised the actual mass of the parts to standardise it to create a model, I’ve used that same maths and scaled it,” Johns says. “When we start to look at it through that lens, it’s just bloody obvious.”
Metal AM is one of the foundations of 3T AM’s approach to sustainable
manufacturing at volume. In the years since the BEAMIT acquisition in 2021, the company has implemented a three-pillar strategy that has seen it build out something of a one-stop shop that encompasses the core elements of the manufacturing value chain post-mining. It has then sought to digitise, developing a digital twin of the entire factory, and automate processes as much as it can –when it does its breakdowns, labour amounts to less than 10% of the cost of a part.
These pillars will ensure many things – one of them is consistency, which will be essential for the company to deliver on its Net Zero 2032 ambitions. Data capture and data analytics are also going to be important facets, so 3T AM is in the process of applying energy monitoring technology to every piece of equipment involved in the manufacture of components, from printing through machining through inspection. This will allow each piece of machinery to be audited, with 3T AM able to first monitor how much energy will be expended as parts move through the workflow, converting that into kilogrammes of CO2 per part, and second, to hopefully be able to put a Net Zero digital certificate against every part that goes out the door.
“That, in the end, is the vision. Every part net zero,” Johns says. “Our consciousness about this is about setting the sustainable manufacturing standard. That’s it. Our mission is to be net zero by 2032 – and as a consequence of the success we’re having – and be greater than 150 million [GBP] in revenue. The reality is, I never have visions or missions around revenue, but I’m not the only one who sets the vision and mission, I work with my team, and we created a purpose. We’ve instilled our values into 3T. Net zero is the focus. And if we get that right, the revenue comes.”
What does net zero really mean, though? In essence, it’s the balance between the greenhouse gases that are produced and the greenhouse gases that are removed from the atmosphere. In manufacturing, to produce anything with zero emissions will be a tough ask, so it’s instead about doing as much as you can to reduce the carbon value of a part and off setting the rest via a carbon exchange programme.
3T AM has recently carried out a study on a part that was previously manufactured the conventional way and now leans on additive
manufacturing. The original component tallied 106 kilogrammes of carbon per part. Once additive manufacturing was incorporated, that came down to four kilogrammes per part. A 102kg per part reduction, which would leave just four kilogrammes to be off set. And this is with further improvements to 3T’s lean manufacturing practices still to come.
“This is where we start to know that we are going in the right direction,” Johns says. “Anybody in manufacturing needs to be buying AM printers and getting into this. If you don’t, you’re not going to be in the future. It’s as powerful as that because the corporates are going to be challenging their supply chain strategies and they’re going to hit something called Scope Three. Scope Three is having to have net zero through the supply chain. If you’re a supplier in that supply chain and you do not have a net zero agenda or you’re not doing the things that help achieve carbon emission balance, they won’t use you anymore.
“If companies like us don’t figure out how we’re going to demonstrate that we can reduce our carbon emission, we will end up with a carbon tax and therefore prices go up, and it goes to the customer. So, either the customer pays it, or they find somebody else that’s doing it, and then we’re out of business. You have to future-proof yourself because this is coming. And it’s coming really, really fast.”
Eight years ago, a spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving is what President Barack Obama described as essential if the challenge of climate change was to be taken on before he performed what may be the most famous mic drop ever at his final White House address.
Eight years into the future and Johns will be hoping such spirit has seen 3T AM reach the kind of milestone that Obama was calling for. The kind of milestone that is required for the future of the planet, of manufacturing and of business. The kind of milestone that Johns advocated when he picked up the microphone as a keynote speaker at this year’s TCT 3Sixty.
