Bridge Production Is Real Production

We are watching additive manufacturing find its place as an accepted and established method for making production parts. We are also watching additive manufacturing realize new possibilities in terms of engineered geometries — the elaborate forms, and customized forms, that can only be made through AM. However, another way to see AM realizing new possibilities is in the products that never would have come to market without it, because of the way 3D printing permits both fast speed to market and bringing the product to market without the investment and commitment needed for production tooling.

Enter bridge production: an important promise of AM. Throughout many stories we have covered recently, bridge production is the theme. Production applications in this category involve producing with AM first — using AM as the bridge — with conventional production processes expected to come later. And the reasons to use AM at the outset in this way are many. They include launching a new product quickly, without waiting for tooling; launching a new product when the ultimate demand is unknown; accelerating the development of complex products, notably cars; making enough of a new medical device to prove it in trials; and realizing a part-making option to “bridge” the range of opportunities involving quantities too small for a mold.

Bridge production is real production. We need to see this, or we miss the transformation AM is bringing by expanding production to enable all the possibilities above. Bridge production is not prototyping; it is well past this. The freedom to produce the first hundred, thousand or fifty thousand units through additive manufacturing offers a way to find the market and serve the market without delay, and without feigning the certainty that a hard-tooled process requires.

Yet while it is real production, bridge production is also fluid. Many of prototyping’s freedoms are still there. The design can still change. Plus, the demand and even the ultimate production process can still be discovered. One of the striking things about bridge production with AM is the way the span of the bridge can be long — and for now, might even extend into a haze. As noted in the story about Cobra Moto’s launch of its new motorcycle, the “bridge” represented by additive production might ultimately lead to a future of continued additive production.

And there is more. This journey also includes one more long-spanning bridge, and I am not sure whether any of the companies we have recently covered within this theme yet see it. Products begin their life, and they end their life. Demand declines because the next new product has come. Yet during this stage, there are still users, and a market for parts, ramping down slowly over time. The digital file meant to begin the journey with 3D printing thus serves as the fitting tool for completing the journey the same way. The final bridge is service parts — and AM means these can be made without tooling, without stocking inventory, in the quantities the market needs. In the spans that it crosses during different stages of production, AM is not the bridge too far; it is the bridge that goes exactly the distance needed.