3D Printing

-Vignesh & Lokesh

It’s been sometime since this tech has been taking ground yet it feels that this piece of innovation is still in its primitive stage. Well, it’s not! Recently even houses are even built with this tech. Yah I’m talking about the 3D printing technology. Let’s look deep into what this technology is doing and why are people taking this as a new age invention.
To put it in simple words this tech is called additive manufacturing, yes, the same additive as addition in mathematics. Manufacturing usually happens with large number of labours, machinery, processes etc, while this innovation simplifies all these time-consuming process to 2 or 3 steps. Here the design of the product is creating digitally using a software and with various methods like SLA, DLD, FDM, SLS robots adds the raw material layer by layer until the design the formed as simulated using a software. And again, the reason of the widespread success is that it can be used irrespective of any raw materials.
Now let’s discuss how 3D Printing works in simple words
Step 1:
The first step is the preparation, which means you have to prepare the 3D design using a 3D scanner or software like CAD and have to create a digital file ready to be uploaded for printing. The 3D file can also be easily downloaded file in some online marketplace. These digital files are not any complex things these are just like any other file on the computer with a different extension to be used for 3D printing. Once the file is ready for printing, we can go to the second step.
Step 2:
It is the actual printing process. First, you need to choose which material will best achieve the specific properties required for your object. The variety of materials used in 3D printing is very broad. It includes plastics, ceramics, resins, metals, sand, textiles, biomaterials, glass, food and even lunar dust! Most of these materials also allow for plenty of finishing options that enable you to achieve the precise design result you had in mind, and some others, like glass for example, are still being developed as 3D printing material and are not easily accessible yet.
Step 3:
The last is the finishing process. This step requires specific skills and materials. When the object is first printed, often it cannot be directly used or delivered until it has been sanded, lacquered or painted to complete it as intended.
The material chosen for the project will determine which printing methods (as mentioned earlier) are most suitable.
Advantages of 3D printing
-Potentially reduces overall construction cost significantly
-Order of magnitude difference in overall construction time
-Brings down the related carbon footprint
-Increases productivity of labour involved
-Offers raw material flexibility/utilisation of eco-friendly materials.
Using this 3D technology almost production cost of almost all the fields can be reduced. It might be difficult to believe but it’s already there in almost every automation industry from food and textiles to avionics every field needs the expertise of 3D printing.
I believe these 3D printing is evolving to be something like cement in the 19th century where life would be difficult to imagine without that. In the urban compact housing problems can be easily addressed with this technology. Urban planning, medical construction needs which require precision and also speed can also be a beneficiary of these. I mean there is nothing that we could not imagine without the use of 3D printing.
So, to the civil engineer graduates you all have a great piece of technology waiting to embrace you with its innovation. I hope as a nation we use this effectively to progress our growth.