Why the 3D printing revolution hasn’t happened yet

The so-called “dis­rupt­ive” tech­no­logy that is 3D print­ing, now in its thirties, would seem to be com­ing back into fash­ion. Yet, des­pite its revolu­tion­ary tech­nic­al prop­er­ties and advant­ages, as well as very optim­ist­ic growth pro­jec­tions, the indus­tri­al and domest­ic uses of this tech­no­logy seem to be pro­gress­ing much more slowly than expec­ted. As such, we are still wait­ing for the 3D print­ing revolu­tion in our day to day lives, which experts have been pre­dict­ing for years. For Thi­erry Rayna, who has been study­ing the adop­tion and impact of addit­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing for years, this revolu­tion can­not take place without com­bin­ing 3D print­ing with oth­er “emer­ging” tech­no­lo­gies, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, con­nec­ted objects and aug­men­ted reality. 

What is 3D print­ing used for in practice?

Thi­erry Rayna. Broadly speak­ing, there are four pos­sible uses of 3D print­ing ¹. Firstly, rap­id pro­to­typ­ing appeared in the 1980s and was the only pos­sible use of this tech­no­logy for a long time. Next, 3D print­ers star­ted to be used to design tools (moulds, cut­ting guides) for tra­di­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods (known as “rap­id tool­ing”). This allows the pro­duc­tion of moulds (for injec­tion mould­ing) for example, which often have a highly com­plex struc­ture, at a much lower cost and much more quickly. Pro­duc­tion in this way allows for faster cool­ing and demould­ing, or bet­ter per­form­ing products thanks to the pos­sib­il­ity of print­ing more com­plex sur­faces (Mich­elin tyres, for example). 

The next step was the use of 3D print­ing to man­u­fac­ture objects (or parts of them) dir­ectly, which offers a real cost advant­age. As no tools are required for man­u­fac­tur­ing (no moulds, etc.), the cost remains con­stant, and objects can be pro­duced in very small series. 

The final step is on-demand pro­duc­tion car­ried out loc­ally or even dir­ectly “at home” by con­sumers. This takes us from a situ­ation in which pro­duc­tion is based on estim­ated demand (hence the poten­tial for waste), to one in which only what is needed is pro­duced, with trans­port­a­tion being reserved for raw mater­i­als only. Indeed, the cost per unit in 3D print­ing is con­stant so there is much less reas­on to con­cen­trate pro­duc­tion geo­graph­ic­ally or tem­por­ally as is cur­rently the case. 

This final applic­a­tion is what we tend to ima­gine when think­ing about 3D print­ing: domest­ic-use. But it should be noted that pro­to­typ­ing and tool­ing still account for ~90% of the uses of the tech­no­logy. Dir­ect man­u­fac­tur­ing and “at home” pro­duc­tion are (as yet) not widespread.

Why do you think 3D print­ing has not found its place in our every­day life yet? 

It has in fact already been integ­rated into our lives for cer­tain uses: pro­to­typ­ing and tool­ing, but these uses are not very vis­ible and are rel­at­ively non-dis­rupt­ive. For the rest, and des­pite the sig­ni­fic­ant advant­ages of 3D print­ing, we are still look­ing for uses, both domest­ic and indus­tri­al, that really make sense. 

For the moment, 3D print­ing is still com­pet­ing with oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­no­lo­gies, which are undoubtedly less “mod­ern” but highly optim­ised. In fact, even though “dir­ect man­u­fac­ture” of objects (i.e., loc­al) is the most trans­form­at­ive applic­a­tion of the tech­no­logy, it is still only really jus­ti­fied in three very spe­cif­ic cases: urgency or the need for a very short lead time; the man­u­fac­ture of very small series or highly per­son­al­ised products; or the man­u­fac­ture of objects with a very com­plex design. How­ever, these needs are only crit­ic­al in very spe­cif­ic indus­tries such as aero­naut­ics, medi­cine, space and defence. All of which are, his­tor­ic­ally, key sec­tors for 3D printing. 

Indi­vidu­als, on the oth­er hand, might feel such needs like avoid­ing the need to go to the shop or wait­ing for a deliv­ery, cre­at­ing cus­tom objects or print­ing parts for repair­ing domest­ic appli­ances. How­ever, there is then a purely prac­tic­al issue: using a 3D print­er is cur­rently any­thing but plug-and-play! You have to digit­ally mod­el the object using soft­ware that is still too com­plex, phys­ic­ally cal­ib­rate the machine before each print, and hope that the print­ing – which can take sev­er­al hours, even for the simplest object – will go smoothly. 

The machines are highly sens­it­ive, so tem­per­at­ure, humid­ity, vibra­tions or mater­i­als are all pos­sible causes of fail­ure². If it doesn’t work prop­erly you will have to start all over again. As for mass cus­tom­isa­tion, often per­ceived as the flag­ship argu­ment of 3D print­ing, it is cur­rently of little rel­ev­ance, apart from very spe­cif­ic use cases like pros­thet­ics. For a long time now, major brands have been offer­ing the pos­sib­il­ity of per­son­al­ising objects (a pair of Nike shoes, for example), but few con­sumers actu­ally do so. And cus­tom­isa­tion is nowadays lim­ited to a few objects: what will hap­pen when we can cus­tom­ise everything? Who will take the time to do it?

So, you don’t think 3D print­ing will take off?

Not until we find a use that really makes sense in rela­tion to the tech­nic­al (and not fantasy) char­ac­ter­ist­ics of 3D print­ing. In dir­ect or loc­al man­u­fac­tur­ing, the tech­no­logy is cur­rently only suit­able for very spe­cif­ic sec­tors and under spe­cif­ic con­di­tions. Rare are the cases where lead time, small series size, or the need for com­plex­ity are import­ant. In the major­ity of cases, this argu­ment does not apply for private indi­vidu­als – deliv­ery in urb­an areas some­times takes less time than it takes to print the object! Moreover, even in industry, the gen­er­al­isa­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing using 3D print­ing is not a giv­en.³

The fact that the man­u­fac­tur­ing cost per unit remains con­stant is both good and bad news: as soon as the num­ber of units pro­duced is (rel­at­ively) high, the lack of eco­nom­ies of scale becomes par­tic­u­larly lim­it­ing. In this case, it is always more prof­it­able to use tra­di­tion­al pro­duc­tion meth­ods. Moulds and tools are made which are cer­tainly expens­ive, but they make it pos­sible to pro­duce tens or even hun­dreds of thou­sands of units quickly at very low unit cost. 

Addit­ive man­u­fac­tur­ing is not a new tech­no­logy, its found­ing pat­ents were filed in the mid-1980s, only ten years after the cre­ation of the first per­son­al com­puters. But ten years ago, per­son­al com­puters were already ubi­quit­ous. Ten years later, wide­spread, access­ible 3D print­ing remains a dis­tant dream, des­pite all its ‘revolu­tion­ary’ advant­ages. This shows that it is not the tech­no­logy that makes the ‘dis­rup­tion’, but the use that is made of it. PC sales, for example, plummeted in the 1980s because people didn’t know what to do with them… then (paper) print­ers, digit­al cam­er­as and espe­cially the Inter­net came along in the 1990s, and every­one cot­toned on to their appeal.

I think that 3D print­ing will have the same fate. Once coupled with data col­lec­tion via con­nec­ted objects, and sub­sequent pro­cessing by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, its use­ful­ness will become appar­ent, and will thus cease to be a niche tech­no­logy. It will then be pos­sible to print a large num­ber of objects (or more par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant parts of objects), for which cus­tom­isa­tion will be fine-tuned and auto­mat­ic, with real added value. But even in this case, it may be enough to have a print­er in a shop nearby. It is prob­ably more sci­ence fic­tion that every­one will have a 3D print­er at home one day! After all, dec­ades after their inven­tion, not every­one has a bread maker or a yoghurt maker at home…

Inter­view by Juli­ette Parmentier