Is AM in Competition With Conventional Manufacturing? Tooling Is on Conventional’s Side

Is additive manufacturing (AM) in competition with other, more established manufacturing processes?

To be sure, it is. A part that in the past might have been made through molding or machining could be a candidate for 3D printing today. Indeed, the range of production work for which AM is a competitor to established manufacturing processes is growing.

And if this competition has sides, then I am on both. Along with my role for Additive Manufacturing, I am also part of the staff of Modern Machine Shop, which covers CNC machining — an established process. One thing this dual role helps me see is that the terms of the contest are not fixed on either side. Where there is an old technology and a new one, observers’ attention naturally tends to go to the new technology’s advances, spotting how quickly those advances proceed and how much the technology changes with each leap. What is easy to overlook is that the established technology also may change. This is happening in manufacturing; the changes come more slowly and may be less dramatic, but conventional manufacturing processes are advancing, too. The newcomer, AM, is in no way assured of a straight path to success.

But here is the thing: One of the most important ways conventional manufacturing is advancing today is through the application of 3D printed tooling. Thanks to 3D printing, tooling for established manufacturing processes can be made cheaper and with less lead time, and in many cases can be made to perform better than standard tooling made in conventional ways. When we speak of 3D printed tooling, what we are really talking about is the way AM is aiding and advancing conventional manufacturing.

So, AM is also on both sides, or so it would seem. AM for tooling is essentially in competition against AM for production parts.

It seems fitting, then, that as an immediate follow-up to our recent collection of stories all about production, we have recently posted various stories all about tooling. Recent pieces cover the use of 3D printed tooling for casting, injection molding, foam molding, low-temperature molding, assembly and machining. As just the range of these successes shows, tooling is every bit as impactful upon the future of production as the chance to make production parts through AM, because tooling enhances the possibilities of operations that are well-known and widely used.

Are there really different sides, then? Is there really a competition? Some tooling examples bring this matter circling fully back onto itself. For example, injection molding (a conventional process) gets more capable in some cases — through short lead times or conformal cooling — thanks to tooling made through AM. However, to make mold tooling this way represents AM succeeding over machining, because machining (another conventional process) is the way molds are usually made. In other words, the conventional process wins because AM wins over a conventional process. As this confusing summary reveals, the analogy of a competition becomes particularly tortured at this point.

The entire question deserves to be considered in a different light. Is AM in competition with other, more established manufacturing processes? To be sure, it is not — this isn’t the right paradigm after all, as the impact of 3D printed tooling makes clear. The larger and truer paradigm is this: Manufacturing is advancing, and AM is powering the advance.