3D printing: unexpected ecological benefits for industrials

Since 2018 the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Den­mark has been map­ping the use of 3D print­ing by Dan­ish pro­duc­tion com­pan­ies, togeth­er with the Dan­ish Addit­ive Man­u­fac­tur­ing Hub. Their latest report from 2022¹ based on inter­views and sur­vey data from autumn 2021, ana­lyses the link between use of 3D print­ing tech­no­logy and the com­pan­ies’ approach to eco­lo­gic­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity. All pro­duc­tion sites of firms in man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries with more than 10 employ­ees were invited to participate. 

Over­all, Dan­ish com­pan­ies gen­er­ally repor­ted that they have a strong focus on eco­lo­gic­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity. As there are mul­tiple sources of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and ways to improve, a more detailed invest­ig­a­tion high­lights some inter­est­ing trends. First, sus­tain­ab­il­ity has com­monly been asso­ci­ated with reduc­tion of water and energy use in indus­tri­al firms but there is also now a new, strong focus on redu­cing mater­i­al waste dur­ing pro­duc­tion – with just over half the com­pan­ies focus­ing on optim­ising the way they use their products. 

How­ever, much less atten­tion is paid to improv­ing cir­cu­lar eco­nomy of products. As such, almost half the com­pan­ies repor­ted no or very little focus on pro­long­ing the lifespan of their products through offer­ing spare parts, repair ser­vices or “take-back” at end-of-life of products. Moreover, many of the com­pan­ies have no or very little focus on optim­ising product lifespan and recyc­ling in general. 

In 2018 and 2019, a quarter of Dan­ish man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies repor­ted using 3D print tech­no­logy, while the share had increased to a third in 2021. The primary use of 3D print­ing is for product devel­op­ment tasks. It both facil­it­ates design of new products and speeds up the pro­cess as the site can print and test pro­to­types as needed. Of those, 80% report that they either own or lease the equip­ment – mean­ing they have it phys­ic­ally present with­in the com­pany. The remain­ing 20% com­pan­ies buy 3D print­ing ser­vices from sub­con­tract­ors. For example, Boe­ing now has a divi­sion for 3D print­ing indus­tri­al parts for both sub­mar­ines, heli­copters, and planes. 

Com­pan­ies describe the trans­ition from a slow-mov­ing pro­cess of send­ing spe­cific­a­tions to sub-con­tract­ors abroad and wait­ing sev­er­al weeks to receive back pro­to­types that often had to be repeated sev­er­al times, to overnight print­ing. 3D print tech­no­logy enables com­pan­ies to get from idea to product much faster with less CO₂ emis­sions from logist­ics and less waste. 

Of those, a loc­al com­pany, Jydsk Emblem Fab­rik, pro­duces medals and emblems for a range of private and pub­lic cus­tom­ers includ­ing the Dan­ish army. The firm has worked stra­tegic­ally over the last 10 years to move its pro­duc­tion back to Den­mark to reduce costs and time usage of logist­ics, whilst allow­ing the com­pany to ensure a high-qual­ity, flex­ib­il­ity and main­tain­ing a short time from design to pro­duc­tion. 3D print tech­no­logy has enabled this pro­cess and sim­ul­tan­eously facil­it­ate more envir­on­ment­ally friendly pro­duc­tion and reduced CO₂ emis­sions from logist­ics in both devel­op­ment and production. 

Oth­er examples include Jør­gensen Engin­eer­ing, a robot­ics integ­rat­or, that increas­ingly applies 3D print­ing. The firm first used 3D print in 2016, they now own FDM tech­no­logy and use it to test and print pro­to­types, while they use sub­con­tract­ors for 3D print­ing of pro­duc­tion equipment.

The com­pan­ies that use 3D print tech­no­lo­gies report that they engage with ini­ti­at­ives to increase the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their busi­ness more often than the com­pan­ies that do not use 3D print­ing. In par­tic­u­lar, they are more often focused on aspect per­tain­ing to the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. This is sur­pris­ing, giv­en that most of the com­pan­ies declare that they did not ori­gin­ally adopt 3D print tech­no­logy with the intent of increas­ing the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their busi­ness. And, although there is a wide agree­ment that 3D print­ing is not a “sus­tain­able tech­no­logy”, the com­pan­ies report unex­pec­ted sus­tain­ab­il­ity effects in rela­tion to their imple­ment­a­tion of the technology. 

There are mul­tiple reas­ons for this. First, 3D print­ing can improve com­pan­ies’ mater­i­al use and reduce waste. Waste reduc­tion can be achieved dir­ectly through use of less mater­i­al as 3D print is a lay­er-by-lay­er addit­ive tech­no­logy which enables com­pletely new designs using less mater­i­al. Second, 3D print­ing can reduce CO₂ emis­sions related to logist­ics, as com­pan­ies avoid the time-con­sum­ing pro­cess related to man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­to­types and tools for pro­duc­tion in low-cost geo­graph­ies, or trans­port of spare part to remote loc­a­tions. Third, 3D print­ing can sup­port com­pan­ies’ endeav­our to min­im­ise their neg­at­ive impact on the envir­on­ment through more cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ic paths where product life is expan­ded through ser­vices, spare parts, exten­sions and upgrades, and products are designed for dis­as­sembly and recyc­ling at end-of-life. In a not-too-dis­tant future many com­pan­ies hope to be able to reuse mater­i­als from end-of-life products to cre­ate new com­pon­ents or even entire products. 

When we com­pare the motiv­a­tions for why com­pan­ies adop­ted 3D print­ing (i.e. what they expec­ted to gain) with the effects the com­pan­ies exper­i­ence 3D print to have on their busi­ness, the com­pan­ies exper­i­ence more sus­tain­ab­il­ity effects than they expec­ted pri­or to adopt­ing 3D print tech­no­logy. Hav­ing iden­ti­fied the pos­sible sources, in the report we com­pared the ori­gin­al motives with the achieved effects to identi­fy the poten­tial bene­fits to be cap­tured. What we noticed is that there may be great­er effects with respect to sus­tain­ab­il­ity to be achieved than expec­ted. 10–15% of the com­pan­ies have pos­it­ive effects on sus­tain­ab­il­ity with respect to devel­op­ment of product that are easi­er to recycle, reduc­tion of num­ber of com­pon­ents in the final product, and reduc­tion of mater­i­al con­sump­tion and waste. This can be seen as an open­ing for future increased use of the technology. 

The main find­ings of the study are that a grow­ing share of com­pan­ies that imple­ment 3D print­ing not only facil­it­ate and accel­er­ate innov­a­tion, but also man­age to devel­op more envir­on­ment­ally sus­tain­able products and forms of pro­duc­tion. Although 3D print­ing is not in itself a sus­tain­able tech­no­logy, it can pro­mote sus­tain­able busi­ness pro­cesses. Improved sus­tain­ab­il­ity can be both the res­ult of a con­scious strategy and a side effect of the imple­ment­a­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies such as 3D print­ing. It is import­ant for com­pan­ies to be aware of how 3D print­ing can con­trib­ute to their envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity, wheth­er they are imple­ment­ing 3D print­ing to reduce costs, accel­er­ate innov­a­tion or to improve the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their business.

James Bowers