Over the last three decades, manufacturers have increasingly adopted additive manufacturing to enhance their industrial production capabilities.
The promise of creating lighter, stronger, and more geometrically complex parts than can be economically made using traditional manufacturing processes has been too strong a lure to ignore – and 3D printing has repaid the investment, bringing value to areas of manufacturing that go way beyond the production line.
As Markforged details in their new 2020 Additive Trends Report, we are now seeing manufacturers transform their entire design and production workflows to put 3D printing at the forefront of their operation.
Markforged analysed 100+ applications from around the globe across six major industries to understand how 3D printing is being used in the world today.
The report tells us that manufacturers are utilising 3D printing in hundreds of applications, sometimes boosting their production capability ten-fold.
The Report discusses how we got where we are now with additive manufacturing, and how it is transforming the manufacturing industry at various levels, from design and verification to prototyping, production and problem-solving.
The report is well worth downloading – it is free and accessible to all.
Something else worth checking out is Markforged’s Additive Applications Library, a comprehensive exploration tool that allows you to find real-world 3D printing use cases and examples from Markforged customers.
Markforged makes the Mark Two, X5 and X7 3D printers, a fused filament fabrication 3D printer range that prints nylon models with composite fibre reinforcement. They also make the Metal X, an industrial-grade 3D printer that prints powdered metal. Both printers can replace traditional manufacturing processes like CNC machining and milling.
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For further reading, you might be interested to find out how Wärtsilä Saved Over €100,000 in Tooling with the Markforged X7. You can find lots more manufacturing case studies like this at our engineering and manufacturing page.