The 3D printing revolution | DW Documentary

objects take shape as if by magic created one layer at a time by a machine they can be made of plastics or even metals digital construction plans are swiftly brought to life we're in a whole new world now where we're merging software material science a project can move from the drawing board to the finished product with remarkable speed and three-dimensional printers use less material labor and energy as they turn out new designs it allows goods to be produced in lower quantities more often closer to the point of consumption this technology could have the power to revolutionize the flow of goods and the scope of product markets it's disruptive we're destroying the old production methods that were used for decades now we're supposed to use 3d printing 3d was once a method for niche products now it looks set to become a key technology that might even induce industries that have left Germany to come back home [Music] Berlin's quoits burg district is home to a company called big rap which makes large scale 3d printers engineer stefan via founded the company in 2014 now it's 90 employees work in international teams to design and manufacture 3d printers for industrial clients the printing is done with plastic for example to manufacture cladding for houses that regulates the inside temperature based on how high the Sun is this will be part of a facade that's ten by twenty meters the great thing about this cladding is that it reflects sunlight in summer and lets in sunlight during winter which creates a pleasant climate big rap also makes spare parts this is a headrest for passenger train seats if the headrest is missing or broken people are going to be uncomfortable but we can supply a new frame big rep has designed a headrest prototype and is testing it for German railway company deutsche bahn the printer piles thin layers of material on top of each other in this case melted plastic filaments the process is known as additive manufacturing it builds up objects instead of carving them out of a block 3d printing is based on computer models they could be scans of spare parts or entirely new products like this electric motorcycle here the big rep team is building a prototype of the motorcycle that's to go on display two weeks later at the forum next trade fair in Frankfurt I still have a lot of work to do before the forum next we have to get the printers ready and print out lots of parts almost all the bikes parts have come out of the printer including the elastic tires the frame and the lights many components consist of biodegradable plastic made from cornstarch the team needed just 12 weeks to get from the preliminary design sketches to the finished prototype but they're still working out a few bugs the engineers spent a year tinkering with the new printers and now the machines can be installed in a production line and controlled automatically that's an important step towards mass production so far 3d printing has been used mainly for one-off projects the Sicilian the great thing about 3d printing is that we can create parts that used to seem impossible between classical manufacturing processes simply could not work with certain complex geometries such as a furniture or this gripping device for robots which is based on the design of the human finger the device is outfitted with flexible slats that provide a non-slip grip the fascinating thing is that our creative process is completely digital engineers can sit down at the computer and just design something and their imagination is no longer limited by classical production methods such as sawing or milling music or a phrase this revolutionary new concept may well improve the ways that industry designs manufactures and transports its products [Music] Chicago is home to a number of new high-tech companies including fast radius they print components that are precise and durable enough for use in the mechanical engineering industry fast radius often uses plastic resins which allow for faster printing the process looks like something out of a science fiction film the metal foot dips into the resin solution the components solidify on the bottom as if by magic no molds are needed light sources inside the solution ensure that only certain parts Harden and take shape this process makes the product lighter and also uses fewer raw materials the company's co-founder and CEO is Lou Rossi fast radius is working with logistics company ups to completely rethink the concept of supply chains additive manufacturing will have a profound impact on how global supply chains work we call it the fourth modality of logistics in fact what we mean is that through human history we have moved parts in three ways by ground by air and by sea and now we have a fourth mode of transportation and that is moving parts by the Internet at the speed of light digital production offers a tremendous freedom to potential clients a global 3d printing Network can provide products more efficiently transport routes are shorter and there are no huge specialized factories these days 3d printers can make just about anything and robots automatically supervise the assembly lines these machines can print single pieces or entire series of products 24 hours a day but so far 3d printing accounts for only a small percentage of global manufacturing sales which now total about 12 trillion dollars revenues for the 3d printing industry in 2017 were only about seven billion dollars but over the next 10 years sales are expected to reach 100 billion dollars a lot of spare parts are now made by 3d printers companies can simply scan and store the components instead of keeping them for years in warehouses and they can print new parts whenever they need them position how many data points do we get for this part from each scan it's in the millions of points that we're gathering and and now for a part like this millions of points is a little redundant so what happens is the computer itself notices redundancies points break and simplify and then throws away hundreds of thousands of points the scans are stored in a digital facility and can be printed at any time the companies save money because they don't have to keep lots of products in big warehouses and their machines last longer because spare parts are always available one of our clients is an aerospace client they had a need for a critical tool for repair normally it would have taken them 48 days to have the tool fabricated and conventional methods instead they ordered apart from our virtual warehouse and we made the part certified the part and delivered it halfway around the world within 48 hours it's often faster to print a component part than it is to build it from scratch in future this will likely be done on-site this situation threatens to transform the way that logistics companies like UPS do business it would eliminate lengthy transport routes or warehouses for customers spare parts that's why UPS has teamed up with fast radius to start building a global network of 3d print service providers [Music] it allows goods to be produced in lower quantities more often closer to the point of consumption that's going to radically change the supply chain and UPS has to be able to change with it and the and so that's why we're investing in this in this area because we want to be part of this evolving ecosystem many products will no longer be mass-produced they'll be printed individually to meet the specific needs of clients that will help to eliminate overproduction and long transport routes 3d production also offers a number of other advantages if you're producing for an audience of one so a custom shoe or a custom knee or a custom orthotic those are not going to be produced in massive factories it's going to be much more economical to produce those using 3d printing and so but all of those materials still need to get to the 3d manufacturer and instead of you know shipping out you know thousands of things in bulk you're gonna have thousands of individual shipments so to a company like UPS that's very good it might be good for UPS but less so for traffic and the environment it means more trucks delivering more products and emitting more pollution an effect we've already seen with the rise of online shopping and there are other risks for example how can 3d printing companies prevent the manufacture of illegal weapons what we're doing we make sure we screen every company that we're making parts for to ensure that they're not making unregulated firearm yeah vigilance but criminals will always find ways to get the weapons they want homemade firearms are nothing new but today's high quality 3d printing materials can withstand extreme pressure and heat so they could be used to make weapons in 2013 some Israeli reporters used a 3d printer to make a handgun and then tested it just about a headshot later the reporters smuggled the gun into the Israeli Parliament building in Jerusalem the gun had a metal firing pin but security devices failed to detect it Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was attending a ceremony in the building the reporter who had the 3d gun was seated just 10 rows away from him and even pointed the weapon at the Prime Minister Netanyahu's office later criticized the reporter's actions as irresponsible the hamburg district of finkin Radha is home to an airbus factory the head of the company's emerging technologies department is Matias Zyliss his team uses 3d printed prototypes to help improve components the IDT we've had a long handoff in fact is potentially competitive manufacturing definitely has the potential to change the entire value chain we can do production on site redesign processes and print on demand we can develop completely new products for next-generation aircraft this is where Airbus assembles it's a 350 passenger jets a key component is now being printed in quantity the door locking shaft they're due to fly in the aircraft later this year this component usually consists of ten parts but the Airbus version has just one we've integrated several functions and reduced the weight there are two of these parts per door and they make the aircraft lighter by four kilograms that's a lot in the aviation world it cuts down on fuel consumption and co2 emissions over the 30-year lifespan of an aircraft one less kilogram of weight will save half a million liters of fuel the a350 actually has a lot of 3d printed parts sixteen door lock shafts 20 brackets for the crew cabin compartments and more than 1,000 plastic parts in panels ventilation systems and electronics gear Airbus is even testing prototypes of electrical parts 3d printing is typically used to build grid structures like this cabin partition wall the printed version uses less material and so is lighter than previous models airlines are always trying to reduce the weight of their planes to save fuel but Airbus believes the 3d process could be even more efficient though this is the largest component that we can make right now we'd like to build bigger ones it took us a total of 900 hours to produce a complete partition wall in 7 construction chambers that means we had to start up a printer seven times to produce the 116 parts we needed 40 stud 900 hours of printing time for just one wall that's a lot of work in future the hope is to print a mold and then cast it again and again right now conventional mass production methods can still produce components like this more quickly and cheaply than 3d can but that could soon change this is the form next additive manufacturing trade fair in Frankfurt there are some sophisticated examples of 3d technology here like this model of a human body printed in one go klaus emmerman advises companies on which 3d production methods might work best for them he says that more and more businesses are making the transition to this technology the automotive industry is now starting to design 3d components for their vehicles that's good for the environment because those parts will be produced only on demand and they can be made using powder which can be delivered locally and printed out anywhere in the world where they're needed for example these lightweight brake pedals were made by 3d printers and produced at a local factory that cuts down on waste and emissions respond we typically save 6 tons of co2 emissions per kilo compared to conventional methods this facility in the state of Lower Saxony will be able to print 3d component parts out of aluminium fully automatically this technology could encourage companies to keep their production facilities in Germany instead of exporting them overseas vehicon yes we can bring those factories back to Germany provided that they're fully automated and if we can do that we'll increase the economic value of German companies but traditional mass production is still unbeatably cheap particularly in Asia 3d printing will have to bring something else to the table like printing several components at once such innovations could enhance the competitive profile of German companies 3d printing is already well known for its ability to produce complex prototypes the motorcycle designed and built by big rep was finished in time for the expo but company executives say that they'll have to do a better job of giving customers what they want we all know that for 30 years think about it 30 years there's been a promise made through the Industrial custom out there what 3d printing can do for them we were talking about speed are we fast enough in printing we're talking about precision is that what's coming out of the machine really what we want is it repeatable are we getting the same part over and over again this is what the customer the industrial customer wants and I think we all agree there has been great disappointment around it then that we're going to change today for some applications many kinds of 3d printing are still too slow too imprecise and too expensive but improvements are underway the new big rep printers work up to 10 times faster than the old ones printing speed is the key to making 3d technology more profitable and carbon fiber materials can make the printouts more durable in fact a US firm called carbon based near San Francisco has teamed up with a DDoS to make soles for sport shoes adidas is a pioneer in the use of 3d technology in its products the co-founder and chairman of carbons board Joseph DeSimone invented a process that allows for the mass production of custom-made 3d components his company's partnership with adidas is a big step forward no-one's ever taken 3d printing a high-volume adidas represents a a seminal moment I would argue in the history of industry where we've got volumes that now allow us to have a cost down curve just like injection molding this process could present a cost-effective alternative to conventional mass production methods two years ago it took more than two hours to print a shoe sole like this one now it takes just 30 minutes this will allow the 3d printing world to go from a 10 billion dollar prototyping world to a three hundred billion dollar manufacturing juggernaut so far that's just a vision the grid structure of the 3d shoe sole cannot yet be fully customized and production will not be relocated to Germany where adidas is based the printed soles are shipped to factories in Asia where the shoes are assembled so right now this is not a particularly sustainable production model but that could change in future digital sustainability that's a combination of things one is dematerialization the other one is mitigating supply chains right and having parts on demand or local for local production but it goes well beyond that we've had some breakthroughs now where we can get into bio-based feedstocks Carbon still mainly prints with polymer resins that are petroleum sourced the light sensitive materials enable the company to make products with complex grid structures that are more lightweight but it's also working on ways to make the products more sustainable Vitas is going to do it all polyurethane shoe they've set targets out in the next 10 years or less to have shoes that are recyclable and we have the ability of doing that here at the Frankfurt trade fair such visions of sustainable 3d printing sound like a welcome development but how likely are they to be realized economists all of H petrol is skeptical about promises from the industry these are mainly visions or hopes for the future at this point there's not much evidence that more sustainability is really being achieved petrol works at the Institute for ecological economic research in Berlin the Institute has done a study on whether a mobile phone case printed at home in Germany is more environmentally friendly than one that's mass-produced in Asia and found out that they're about the same that's because the lower co2 emissions from local 3d printing are offset by the higher energy consumption of the printing machines this process is neither particularly sustainable nor economical but it can be profitable for some companies under certain conditions companies can generally make money on expensive 3d printing projects only if they can speed up or streamline production still they'll use fewer materials and some products could be recycled even if they're custom-made we've come to the reflow recycling company in Amsterdam to find out whether 3d printing production really is sustainable about 80% of printed products are made of plastic and only a fraction of them are recyclable or biodegradable this machine at reflow turns discarded plastic bottles into plastic filaments that can be used for printing the granules come from PE tea bottles the material is suitable for 3d printing and it's cheek filaments from reflow were used to build the walls of a shop in London that sells fashions made from recyclable materials sustainability is often good for business but not everyone is willing to pay more for these products so reflow sells its recycled filaments at the same price as its competitors who products a less sustainable industry is interested in sustainability because basically their consumers are asking for it right it's a big macroeconomic trend and industrial players will just have to follow for example reflow supplies 3d material to a company that makes sunglasses this would replace an entire block of raw plastic from which the frames are normally milled and that cuts down on plastic waste reflows recycling technology is already being used in several other countries in India plastic bottles picked up from garbage dumps can be converted into plastic filaments for 3d printing and those who collect the bottles can earn some extra income this technology can help to enhance local value-added cycles all over the world converting discarded plastic into useful products the 3d printing industry is expanding rapidly and growing ever faster and more efficient but it will be some time before we see the promised improvements like shorter supply chains reductions in overproduction the elimination of warehouses for spare parts and the use of recyclable materials in closed-loop systems all that will require a lot of new investment you

Channel: DW Documentary

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Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2020, documentary, 3D printing, Airbus A350, biometrics, Adidas, start-up reflow, petroleum, sustainability, waste

Id: k0poVtBhIsQ

Length: 25min 56sec (1556 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020