Why should I be 3D printing? - Improved Sustainability

3D printing can improve the sustainability of your production in many ways. Sustainability is important to me and is hard to achieve in a competitive manufacturing market. I hope that some of the ideas below can help your business to improve sustainability while remaining competitive.

Minimised Waste: Excess Stock

I believe waste reduction is the best way for businesses to improve sustainability. This is because it benefits the business financially in addition to sustainability improvements. Minimising waste is something that industrialists and environmentalists can all agree on. 

In our previous posts we discussed how wasted, defective or excess stock can be minimised and eliminated by 3D printing precise quantities of parts. Rather than being forced into excessive purchases based on minimum order sizes or shipping costs, you can ensure your production quantities match your demand.

In addition, stock which is no longer useful can be modified with 3D printing to serve a new purpose. If you use brackets which no longer fit a new product design, they can be modified to fit using a bespoke 3D printed part.

Minimising Waste: Deliveries

Minimising the number of deliveries made to your business is also great for costs and sustainability.

3D printers can produce a variety of parts, which means it has the potential to replace several suppliers. Yes, of course, this creates a new supply chain. You will need to purchase a machine and filament, or have parts delivered by an outsourced 3D printing company.  

The trade off is that you can consolidate several supply chains, each with its own deliveries, into a single production method. Instead of buying clips from supplier A, brackets from supplier B, rubber feet from supplier C and signage from supplier D - these can all be produced on a 3D printer from supplier Z.

By consolidating your supply chains, you can drastically reduce the number of deliveries which need to be made. This will have a huge sustainability impact and can also help to minimise complexity in your supply chain.

Control Your Materials

By bringing production under your own control, you can choose what materials your parts are made from. In many cases, parts can be produced from recyclable or biodegradable plastics while still meeting your requirements.

The most common printing material is polylactic acid (PLA), which is produced from crops such as beets and is considered to be a biodegradable plastic.

Note: there is a lot of debate about the biodegradability of PLA, which we will discuss in a future article. Additives to the plastic and the conditions required to break it down are some reasons this is disputed.

Most of the other 3D printing materials are plastics you may be familiar with. Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), Polypropelene (PP), Polycarbonate (PC) and  Polyethelene Terephthalate (PET) are all common plastics which have been adapted to 3D printing.

Like the recyclable plastics you see every day, 3D printed parts produced with these plastics can also be recycled. In production, the required recycling symbols can be easily embossed or debossed into the part to ensure it can be appropriately recycled at end-of-life.

In some cases, recycled filament is available for use in 3D printers. Instead of using virgin plastics, you can turn old plastic parts into new 3D printed ones.

Note: Plastics used for different purposes have slightly different characteristics, such as their molecular weight. Because of this, ABS used for injection moulding, blow moulding and 3D printing will all have slightly different formulations which could affect their recyclability. For example, PET used for 3D printing has glycol added to it and is then called PETG.

Minimise Material Wastage

Depending on the part shape, 3D printing produces little waste when compared to subtractive processes like CNC machining, lathes, laser cutting and so on. These subtractive methods typically produce off-cuts which is wasted by the process.

By using 3D printing, these off cuts and shredded material can be eliminated. This is especially true for parts with lots of holes, such as grills, heat exchangers and lattice structures.

For example, let say you wanted to make a model of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. With a subtractive method like CNC machining, you would start with a metal block (billet) and cut away ~99% of the material to make the shape. With a 3D printer, material would simply be deposited where it need to go. Some supports may be requires and material may be purged, so your wasted material may be 1% in comparison to CNC.

Note: The offcuts from subtractive processes can often be recycled and the waste plastic from 3D printing can too. This take addition equipment and energy, but does mean that the material can be reused.

Most types of 3D printing can also make parts which are hollow or semi-hollow using a feature called infill. If you are making a part which does not have high strength requirements, you can 3D print it with an infill which would use a fraction of the material as a 100%-dense part. This feature is also very useful in parts which need to be lightweight.

When it comes to things like jigs and fixtures for your in-house production, 3D printing can produce them with less material than subtractive or moulding methods. This means that you can benefit from the usefulness of plastics while minimising the amount that you use.

If you think any of these features could help improve your businesses sustainability, I encourage you to give them a try. Perhaps you have some parts which create a lot of offcuts, or ones which could be produced with a semi-hollow infill.

If you’d like help to implement 3D printing and its sustainability characteristics, let us know at 3D Printing for Business.

Thanks for reading,

Simon

simon@3dprintingforbusiness.com.au