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