Although 3D printing is poised for big growth, at least some of the supply chain that supports additive manufacturing may not be quite as ready.

Several companies—particularly those in the aerospace industry—have recently begun to 3D print production-ready parts. That’s a change from using the method solely to create one-off prototypes, as had been the case. But as more companies in diverse industries turn to 3D-printed production-ready parts they may find demand for printers, materials and software exceeds the available supply, according to analysts who follow additive manufacturing trends.

“Currently, we’re not seeing a big supply-chain shortage, but we believe the ingredients are in place for it to develop,” says Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates, a Colorado-based additive manufacturing consulting firm.

Terry Wohlers, consultantTwo major printer manufacturers exist to serve a rapidly developing market for production-ready parts. And those companies by and large keep a proprietary hold on the materials their machines print with, says Nitin Sharma, 3D printing analyst at IHS.

The supply chain also is underdeveloped due to a lack of standardization. Printer manufacturers currently define their own printers’ standards; the industry itself has not yet defined either printer or material standards. Sharma says.

“The supply chain requires a standardization of technologies and processes and it’s still not there,” he says.

25 Years

In fact, in some ways the 3D printing supply chain is almost nonexistent. Wohlers says it may take as long as 25 years before suppliers are able to produce enough 3D printers to meet demand in some market segments. Other segments and applications will take less time or perhaps even more time to mature, he says.

For example, he points to the history of robotics and microprocessors, which, he says, initially were produced in low volumes and “took about a human generation for the major shift to high volume production.”

Although 3D printing has already been around about that long, its adoption for production parts is a relatively recent phenomenon, he says. Patent restrictions began to roll off the technology in recent years with still more restrictions ending in 2015 and 2016.

On the other hand, the 3D printing industry is halfway to maturity and the industry will gradually set material and printer standards over the next 15 years, according to Alex West, associate director of Process, Instrumentation and Machinery at IHS.

Mark Thut, however, holds a different view. He’s a principal consultant at Strategy&, which is a business unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

“Printer manufacturers and materials makers are watching this space very carefully. As soon as it crosses from being used mainly for prototyping to production they’ll be anxious to be right there,” he says.

Vinod Baya, a PWC colleague, agrees and says he expects 3D manufacturing to become more mainstream within the next five years. The supply chain will continue to lag, he says, but should catch up shortly after the technique reaches mainstream adoption. Baya is director of the PWC Center for Technology and Innovation, a think tank for emerging technologies.

The dearth of availability goes beyond materials and machines used for 3D printing. For 3D printing to enjoy widespread adoption, specialized design software as well as inspection and quality control tools still need to be developed or become more widely available, Baya says.

3D-printed housing for T25 sensor. Located in the inlet to the high-pressure compressor, the sensor provides pressure and temperature measurements for the engine’s control system. Image source: GE AviationRecently, for example, GE Aviation announced plans to include 3D-printed parts in its CFM Leap aircraft engine platform beginning in 2016. The engines, produced jointly by GE and partner Snecma, will include 19 3D-printed fuel nozzles in the combustion system.

The printed parts are lighter, faster to produce and less expensive than parts produced via more conventional methods. The nozzles are also hollow and could not have been produced using conventional subtractive manufacturing methods, Baya says.

Last May, printer manufacturer Stratasys announced that its printers had been used to produce more than 1,000 flight parts for the Airbus A350 XWB aircraft, delivered in December 2014. Similarly produced components are also included within in-service jetliners in the A300/A310 family, according to Airbus.

The parts weight 30-55% less than traditionally manufactured parts, reduce raw material used by 90% and cut total energy used in production by up to 90% compared to traditional methods, says Peter Sander of Airbus’s Innovation Cell. Sanders’ group investigates and promotes emerging technologies.

The production method could reduce the total weight on each aircraft by more than one ton. By 2018 Airbus expects to print about 30 tons of metal parts every month, according to a company statement.

Other industries seem poised to follow, particularly those in the medical and dental fields, where the method is already used to create one-off crowns, bridges, stone models and orthodontic appliances that need to be customized to the patient.

However, other industries moving into the space will make for a 3D printer shortage, said Graham Bredemeyer, principal consultant at Realty Additive Manufacturing Partners, a 3D printing consultancy.

“Will there be machines available?” he asks. “Printer manufacturers can already barely build machines to meet demand and these machines are big, industrial machines that take a while to build. They’re like heavy equipment to a certain degree.” Companies that turn to service bureaus for printing also may find a printer shortfall for the same reasons, he says.

Materials Supply Chain

As for the materials used to print a given part, metals are widely available, but materials such as polymers must be purchased directly from printer manufacturers or, as in the case of Airbus, formulated in-house. Here, too, industry standards have not been set for materials. Thermoplastic, metals, sands, ceramics, gypsum, glass and photopolymers are the main categories of materials used for 3D printing.

“Polymers will mostly be locked down by the manufacturer and therefore you'll be locked into sole supplier relationships for the most part,” Bredemeyer says. “Many plastic powder printer companies are the same way,” although the plastic powders can be sourced outside of the printer manufacturer.

“While biomaterials are being 3D printed, sourcing those materials can be rather difficult,” he says. “Much of the development work on those materials is kept behind closed doors.”

As with the printers themselves, materials manufacturers could have a hard time keeping up with demand in the not-to-distant future, Wohlers says.

The modeling software used to design the parts themselves is another critical part of the supply chain that hasn’t yet reached maturity, Baya says. Currently, designers and engineers use on-the-market software to model parts. But modeling software that is specific to 3D printing is on the horizon and may better meet designers’ manufacturing needs.

Baya says he has his eye on software being developed by the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other national and academic laboratories. These will allow users to design materials based on the types of part characteristics they seek, such as density and weight.

QA/QC

Companies that produce many production-quality parts via additive manufacturing also will need new types of quality control and inspection systems that are specially suited to checking parts quality, Bredemeyer says. These systems either are not yet being produced or aren’t being produced in enough numbers to serve the growing 3D manufacturing market, he says.

For instance, one inspection method currently seeing adoption for 3D printed parts involves using radiology equipment to look inside parts that can’t be viewed through means such as infrared cameras. The radiology equipment also can expose micro cracks in parts that otherwise couldn’t be found, he says.

Although it is off to a slow start, the 3D printing supply chain eventually will develop and keep pace with users’ needs, these analysts agree. That’s good news for companies that hope to add the technique to their manufacturing arsenal.

“In the long term, 3D is going to become a much bigger technology,” Baya says. When that happens, “the supply of materials and machines won’t be a problem.”