What is the differences between 3D printing and conventional manufacturing?

There is a long history of 3D printing. In 1981, the concept of 3D printing was available. People attempt to use it for manufacturing but at a high cost. After several tens of years, till now, we have the flourishing of 3D printing. It realized the breakthrough in precision, printing speed, and available material.

 Where we can use 3D printing

It widely covers education, culture, medication, mechanism, electricity, aerospace, military, and more with the development of technology and material availability.

Difference between 3D printing and traditional manufacturing

The traditional manufacturing, we have the embryo first, then remove the excessive part. And the remaining is what we need. If there is a problem, we need to have another mold to modify it. 3D printing accumulates material according to the model. We can see the finished item rapidly. Such as an engraved ball with more than ten flowers on it. With the traditional process, we need to modify the flowers one by one to remove the unrequired parts. With 3D printing, we can produce it directly by accumulating material layer by layer to form the shape according to the mode without wasting material. Thus, it has another name called additive manufacturing, which means using the method of gradually amassing material to manufacture solid parts.

The realization of 3D printing

What we need to apply 3D printing to manufacturing is a digital model. If we want to print a subject, we need to use a computer to build the model or use a 3D scanner to convert the item to digital data. It takes minutes to days to print a subject according to the size.

Different 3D printing technology

 The influence of 3D printing on the traditional manufacturing process

3D printing can realize our imagination to make the virtual into reality. It would change the manufacturing industry.

1, Customize available

We can offer the custom 3D digital mode to get the products. Even if we need only one product or want to create a model according to our design, if we have the digital model for them, we can print it with a 3D printer. We can widely print unique items at a low cost.

2, Real-time production

Because of rapid printing, the designs can be produced in hours or even minutes. It improves the new products’ design, innovation, modification, improvement, and release to market. For uncomplicated products, it needs about 3 hours from digital mode to actual products, while traditionally, we need 4-6 weeks to complete the process. It would accelerate the speed of industrial design.

3, Environment friendly without pollution

The raw material is environmentally friendly, and the whole process causes no pollution. There is no polluted air and water also no waste on material for 3D printing. It is a green industry.

4, Fast speed

Compared with the traditional process, 3D printing needs fewer resources on humans and transportation reparation before we start a project. It demands only machines and raw materials for production.

5, Automotive

Between the imagination and actual products, we need only a 3d printer. It makes the whole process more automotive and saves much cost and error during production.

6, Digitalize

During 3D printing, the essential work is to build digital data for the mode. It makes the industry digitalize for virtual model building instead of the traditional way of the actual model building. We need more designers and engineers in the industry.

Whether it overturns the manufacturing industry or replaces the traditional process, 3d printing influences our life profoundly. We hope it becomes better and better.

WKproto is a professional rapid prototyping and low-volume production manufacture specializing in 3D printing, CNC machining, and Vacuum Casting. Our factory and parter factories enable rapid prototyping of designs from our customers and low volume production for market verification.

We have three factories. 3D printing factory meets the demands of most 3D printing services with 100 SLA machines, 10 SLS machines, 10 MJF machines, 10 SLM machines, and 20 FDM machines. CNC machining factories for processing metals, plastic and more materials with more than 200 machines for CNC milling/CNC lathes/EDM / Wire EDM and the Vacuum Casting factory is for low volume production for ABS、PC、PP、PE、PA、POM、PMMA、PVC.