Additive manufacturing technologies, like 3D printing, have quickly emerged as powerful tools for electronics manufacturers.
Growing pressure to decrease product cycle times, meet new customer needs, and navigate increasingly volatile market conditions have pushed electronics manufacturers to turn to new technologies to improve throughput and bring new products to market faster.
Additive manufacturing and the creation of additive manufacturing electronics (AME) have emerged as a particularly valuable resource for electronics components manufacturing. Now, it appears that 3D printing will become increasingly important to the industry in the next few years.
These are the key benefits of 3D printing for electronics manufacturers and how businesses can leverage these benefits by adopting additive manufacturing technology.
Faster Time to Market, Rapid Prototyping, and Customer-Specific Solutions
The most significant advantage of 3D printing in electronics manufacturing is likely the reduced costs and faster time to market that additive manufacturing can offer.
With 3D printing, manufacturers don’t have to spend time setting up tooling for new parts or preparing molds. Pre-production may be as simple as gathering necessary materials, importing design files, and prepping the 3D printer for part fabrication.
This means manufacturing electronics with 3D printing can be both significantly faster and cheaper than what is possible with conventional subtractive manufacturing strategies.
At the same time, additive manufacturing can also make the design and pre-production process much simpler, allowing designers to sometimes avoid outsourcing the manufacturing of prototypes. It’s often possible to use 3D printing for rapid in-house prototyping, enabling designers to keep prototype manufacturing as close as possible.
With 3D printing-based rapid prototyping, it’s possible for designers to create a new design file, print their design in-house, test the design, and fold insights from testing into a new design within the space of a few days or even hours.
The lower cost of additive manufacturing also means smaller production runs are often more practical. While it is often cost-ineffective to create a mold for a part that will only be manufactured a dozen times, generating a model for the 3D printing of a short run or small-batch component is often an option.
The potential for cost-effective small production runs can help manufacturers more effectively create customer-specific solutions.
If a client needs a variant of a manufacturer’s existing product or a completely new solution, it may be possible for the manufacturer to quickly modify existing design files, print a prototype device or circuit board, and begin testing. Within a few days of a request being made, they can provide a functional prototype to a client.
Similarly, if customers need a custom-made tool or subcomponent, manufacturers can often design and manufacture these parts, even if it would not be practical to do so with conventional manufacturing methods.
Lower Manufacturing Cost and Reduced Waste
3D printing can also be a valuable strategy for manufacturers looking to make fabrication less expensive and reduce the overall carbon cost of manufacturing electronics.
With 3D printing, the manufacturer can often minimize or even eliminate the production of waste, unlike with conventional manufacturing techniques, where material loss is often both expected and unavoidable.
Because the 3D printer fabricates a product layer by layer, rather than by sculpting away excess material, 3D printing often yields much less waste and uses less energy than conventional manufacturing strategies. Some writers estimate that additive manufacturing can reduce scrap waste by as much as 70 to 90%.
It’s also possible for manufacturers to combine conventional and additive manufacturing approaches — allowing them to minimize waste without fully committing to a new manufacturing approach.
For example, many surface treatment providers now offer plating for 3D printed products, covering thermoplastic components with metal to provide additional benefits and functionality.
In some cases, 3D printing may also enable manufacturers to take advantage of e-waste that would otherwise go to landfills. Experts in printed electronics are beginning to explore the use of additive manufacturing in recycling e-waste.
Other experts are working to develop biodegradable substrates and print materials that will naturally degrade over time, ensuring that single-use electronics and similar devices don’t contribute to the electronic manufacturing industry’s growing e-waste problem.
In the near future, adoptees of 3D printing technology may be able to leverage these technologies to help minimize waste, provide more eco-friendly manufacturing options for clients, and minimize material costs.
New Manufacturing Business Models
Service models are increasingly popular in the tech world due to the flexibility and reduced costs that strategies like software-as-a-service (SaaS) can offer both end-users and service providers. Now, 3D printing is enabling a new business model for electronics manufacturers — like manufacturing as a service (or MaaS).
In some cases, MaaS can make new types of electronic components practical, like PragmatIC, a manufacturer of flexible integrated circuitry (IC) that is using 3D printing technology to manufacture one-time-use and disposable electronics, like RFID tags.
The company hopes its new IC fabrication process will provide the foundation for the dedicated production of semiconductors and similar components on major customer sites. These components help support a wide range of internet of things applications, and shifting production to customer sites could help customers better cope with increasingly volatile supply chains.
The benefits of the strategy, according to the company, include low capital expenses, fast production cycle times, and minimal carbon footprint.
As devices like IoT semiconductors become more important to electronics manufacturing, being able to quickly and cheaply print simple electronics using techniques like 3D printing could offer major benefits to manufacturers.
How 3D Additive Manufacturing Can Benefit Electronics Manufacturers
3D printing can provide significant benefits for electronics manufacturers — including faster time to market, lower manufacturing costs, reduced waste, and accelerated prototyping.
With 3D printing, manufacturers can often use the same materials they use with conventional approaches but without the same level of material waste. 3D printing can also help streamline manufacturing, allowing designers to keep manufacturing in-house and reduce the time it takes to design new products.
In the near future, adoptees of 3D printing technology may also be able to take advantage of cutting-edge innovations from the 3D printing field. Manufacturers may be able to print new components using recycled electronics and materials, reducing the production of new e-waste.
Emily Newton is a technical writer and the Editor-in-Chief of Revolutionized focused on ways technology is changing the industrial sector.