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