How is software advancing 3D printing?
The 3D printing revolution is a lot about hardware: the printers, the printing methods and the materials that can be used in these printers. But let’s not forget software orchestrates the digital data flows and defines the overall experience. The entire 3D printing lifecycle relies on software —from sourcing ideas and designing in three dimensions to delivering formatted data to 3D printers, and then monitoring and managing the printing process, see Figure 1.
Figure 1: In the journey from idea to artifact, 3D printing software is concentrated in four phases.
As discussed in our previous post on 3D printing, it can be a game changer once it pivots from its current focus on rapid prototyping to printing finished products and components. Software innovations are central to this pivot as manufacturing finished products demands a higher degree of integration, automation, reliability, and repeatability.
Today, the overall 3D printing experience is challenged, but some of these challenges can be addressed by improvements in software:
Creating 3D models is hard
Most CAD solutions remain the province of highly-trained design professionals, but even they often must acquire additional skills to work successfully with 3D printers and 3D printing software.
Printers are difficult to use
Some 3D print processes can be fussy and unpredictable, requiring considerable tinkering to get the right result. Achieving consistent results on the same printer or across different printers is also difficult.
Yield, quality, and cost-effectiveness can be poor
Existing technology sometimes yields output that might have defects or does not match expectations, wasting material and increasing costs.
Software and standards do not capture and transmit complex and functional system details
The technology for 3D printing is evolving to be capable of printing complete systems that include multiple materials, integrated sensors, circuits, batteries, and so on. Most modeling software presently does not seamlessly capture and transmit all this information to printers.
Software innovations are playing a role in addressing these challenges and developments are spread across the cycle from sourcing of designs to printing of physical artifacts.
Easy access to 3D designs is becoming simpler. Ready-made designs are increasingly available from online libraries. And scanning existing objects using 3D imaging is becoming affordable, even ubiquitous. Both of these allow users to source 3D designs without using sophisticated design software. Design libraries enable users to search across hundreds of thousands of designs and then print them or customize them or adapt them for other uses. Portable 3D scanners simplify scanning of a physical artifacts and turning that into a 3D design. Some apps turn the smartphone into a 3D scanner, making 3D scanning accessible to all with smartphones and tablets.
The experience of creating designs is becoming simpler too. Radical simplification of traditional CAD solutions along with growing support for 3D interactivity in web browsers, made possible by WebGL (Web Graphics Library), means any user can use their browsers to create and manipulate 3D designs. And some innovators are developing entirely new interfaces to further simplify the creation and manipulation of 3D designs.
Still under development are software improvements capable of extending 3D model specifications to go beyond geometry or topology to include new details that specifies a complete, functional component or system. Details such as multiple materials, multiple colors, embedded sensors, embedded circuits, batteries and so on are essential before 3D printers can print finished products.
Where sophistication is being added is to software that optimizes a 3D design for printing, such as lattice generation, support generation, hollowing out designs (to save material) and so on. New functionality is also being added to software that prepares the design for printing and guides the printer during a print session for operations such as slicing, self-leveling, in-process inspection and others. The result is more of the print runs are repeatable and successful.
Ultimately, for 3D printing to transition from prototyping to legitimate manufacturing technology, it will need to interface with a company’s traditional product and manufacturing data management systems. While 3D printing is unique in that that it can go direct from engineering/design to manufacturing/production, its integration with an enterprises’ supply chain, ERP, PLM (product lifecycle management) and customer support systems will unlock a greater proportion of its overall value. We should expect developments on this front in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment