The potentialities of 3D printing in the household appliance sector

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one 3d printer with a tablet pc and a cad software (render)

3d printerPanasonic has used it to manufacture a TV set, Hoover for the accessories of a vacuum cleaner, Haier for a conditioner: however, 3D printing, in the household appliance industry, is a field to be still fully explored.

one 3d printer with a tablet pc and a cad software (render)
A 3d printer with a tablet pc and a cad software (render)

The diffusion of more and more innovative 3D printers and of cutting-edge processes for the additive manufacturing is revolutionizing the way not only of implementing prototypes but also of conceiving the production. Nowadays the 3D printing is no longer a novelty and there are still several solutions to implement manufactured goods with techniques differing from the most conventional ones, such as stock removal and material moulding. In terms of applications, there are four areas highlighting the greatest potentialities of the additive manufacturing: the rapid prototyping as support of product development activities, the rapid manufacturing, the rapid tooling (i.e. the opportunity of making moulds with the additive manufacturing) and the possibility of creating spare parts printed in 3D. Concerning the first ambit, 3D systems allow carrying out easily and quickly the prototyping, with a significant saving of times and costs for the product development. Therefore, they reduce the time-to-market and they provide designers with the opportunity of enjoying more freedom to experiment a bigger number of projects, even with complex geometries. Besides, printing technologies allow achieving prototypes strictly resembling the final product: companies can therefore propose a higher number of new ideas to potential customers and then decide to start the production of those arousing more interest. Thanks to the lower costs for the product development phase, engineers can test more projects simultaneously in order to select the most effective ones; moreover, it is possible to control practically in real time the various aspects connected with the project processing, quickly identifying possible improvement areas.

Earphones by the American company Normal printed in 3D. (Source: Stratasys)
Earphones by the American company Normal printed in 3D. (Source: Stratasys)

The birth of printing instruments usable with a broad range of materials is making additive technologies more interesting for the production as well. When the implementation of complex geometries is at stake, the additive manufacturing offers great freedom, not always attainable through traditional processes. Besides, the additive manufacturing is highly suitable for small productions of high added-value pieces and for customized solutions. Finally, the 3D printing can be advantageous also for the production of spare parts because printing them on the spot means reducing the warehousing costs that must be borne to have the spare parts at disposal for all the necessary time.

Hoover has created a partnership with MakerBot for the 3D printing of accessories for vacuum cleaners.

Process variety and versatility

The success that 3D printing and additive technologies are experiencing is mostly ascribable to the variety of available materials (both plastics and metals) and to the numerous devised processes, which allow attaining objects with good performances in terms of finishes and mechanical resistance. Among the most diffused technologies, there are those operating by sintering or melting of powders that can be thermoplastic, metallic or siliceous. This category includes for instance the Selective Laser Sintering, the Selective Laser Melting and the Electron Beam Melting. Another machining is the so-called 3D Print (meant in the strict sense): it is similar to the Selective Laser Sintering but powders, instead of being sintered, are bonded by an adhesive. Fused Deposition Modelling and Fused Filament Fabrication techniques use instead filaments of plastic material that is melted and extruded in order to be deposited up to manufacturing the model. Moreover, among the latest novelties that emerge as an alternative to the injection moulding there is the plastic material freeforming technique developed by Arburg. It is based on a machinery called “freeformer” that produces functional plastic pieces by using suitable standard granulates and starting from 3D Cad data. The freeformer is suitable for the additive manufacturing, on an industrial scale, either of single components or of small batches of pieces in several variants, as well as for the customization of mass-produced products.

Besides, concerning the technologies that use liquid material, there are solutions that are based on the photopolymerization through UV lamps or laser beams or products that jet-print with a modality recalling the ink jet technique. Among the various technologies for the additive manufacturing, we mention also the stereolithography, which is the first rapid prototyping technique that was conceived: it is based on the polymerization of a liquid resin through a laser that, focused on the work plan through optical systems, determines the prototype construction layer by layer through the progressive plan lowering.

Generally, additive technologies use the layer-by-layer system, even if examples concerning continuous printing processes are not missing. It is the case of Clip (Continuous Liquid Interface Production), a solution developed by the American company Carbon3D that uses light, oxygen and a tank containing resin sensitive to UV rays for the object implementation. Clip exploits a chemical process that, balancing the light (responsible for the polymerization) and the oxygen (that inhibits the polymerization), enables the continuative printing.

Concerning the 3D printing, moreover, further innovations are represented by the possibility of using filaments with electrical conductivity and of printing circuits, thus paving new ways in the electronics ambit, too. 3D printers are becoming more and more versatile, to meet the various requirements, both in case of small and of big companies. The offer covers not only a big variety of materials and technologies but it includes also printers with very different price ranges and with printing areas with different sizes.

 

Haier conditioner manufactured with 3D printing and presented at the Appliance and Electronics World Expo in Shanghai.
Haier conditioner manufactured with 3D printing and presented at the Appliance and Electronics World Expo in Shanghai.

3D printing: what steps already taken in household appliances?

While in ambits like the aerospace industry, medical or jewellery, nowadays 3D printing is a reference technology, in the household appliance industry several potentialities must be still explored. It is certainly a promising instrument, which will evolve in time thanks to the advantages that it brings not only in the product development but also in production. Applications, then, can concern the industrial ambit as well as the consumer one, with new opportunities offered to users. Some household appliance manufacturers have already started assessing the potentialities of the 3D printer, playing a pioneering role. In 2013, for instance, Panasonic announced they intended to use the 3D printing for the development of digital household appliances, in order to reduce times and costs of research and development. At CES in Las Vegas, the company also presented a 3D-printed TV set and afterwards it used this technology for the creation of camera prototypes. Hoover operated instead in the domestic printing ambit, which might disclose new interesting prospects for the sector. At the end of 2014, the company communicated its partnership with MakerBot (American company specialized in 3D printing, taken over by Stratasys), thanks to which they offered the possibility of printing accessories for vacuum cleaners print-on-demand. To do that, they made available the community Thingiverse of MakerBot to share downloadable files for the 3D printing. Moreover, last year Haier presented, at the Appliance and Electronics World Expo in Shanghai, a conditioner manufactured through 3D printing technique. The company stated that each unit piece is manufactured on demand, thus creating a strong connection among users’ needs and the real production, because it is easy to manufacture unique parts with a high customization level. Finally, in the sector of brown goods, one of the latest examples of 3D printing application is the manufacturing of the accessories dedicated to the Fairphone 2 smartphone, a product proposed by Fairphone, social enterprise that operates with ethical purposes in the electronics ambit. Interesting also the Olo solution, a 3D printer designed by the Italian company Solido3D that allows printing through the inputs transmitted by a smartphone. Actually, the operation provides for the following steps: you take a picture of the object that you want to print and then you position the phone in the printer’s base. Afterwards, it is necessary to pour a particular resin into the dedicated space and, thanks to an apposite application, some light pulses that allow sintering the resin are sent.