Advantages of 3D printing technology

(1) Save materials. It does not need to eliminate the leftover materials, improves the utilization rate of materials, and reduces the cost by abandoning the production line;

(2) It can achieve high precision and high complexity, and can manufacture very complex parts which can not be manufactured by traditional methods;

(3) Without traditional tools, fixtures, machine tools or any molds, 3D CAD graphics of any shape can be directly generated into real products;

(4) It can automatically, quickly, directly and accurately transform the 3D design of computer into physical model, and even directly manufacture parts or molds, thus effectively shortening the product development cycle;

(5) 3D printing has the characteristics of distributed production without centralized and fixed manufacturing workshop;

(6) 3D printing can take shape in a few hours, which enables designers and developers to realize the leap from plan to entity;

(7) It can print assembled products, so it can reduce assembly costs and even challenge mass production.

Disadvantages of 3D printing technology

(1) It has the weakness of high cost and long working hours

3D printing is still an expensive technology. Due to the difficulty of research and development of materials for additive manufacturing and the small amount of use, the manufacturing cost of 3D printing is high, but the manufacturing efficiency is not high.

At present, 3D printing technology is mainly used in the research and development of new products in China, with high manufacturing cost, low manufacturing efficiency and unsatisfactory manufacturing accuracy. 3D printing can not replace the traditional manufacturing industry at present. In the future development of manufacturing industry, "reduced material manufacturing method" is still the mainstream.

(2) It has no advantage in large-scale production

Since 3D printing technology has the advantages of distributed production, on the contrary, it has no advantages in large-scale production. Tianjin Tianyi Duowei Technology Co., Ltd. introduced that at present, 3D printing technology does not have the conditions to replace the traditional manufacturing industry. In terms of mass production and large-scale manufacturing, the traditional reduced material manufacturing method with high efficiency and low cost is better.

Now it seems unlikely that 3D printing will replace mass production. Not to mention that 3D printing technology currently does not have the ability to directly produce complex mixed material products such as automobiles. Even if this technology has made great progress in the future, it may take several months to completely print a car, and the cost is far higher than the cost shared by each car in the mass production of cars.

Therefore, for the production of products with a large number of rigid demands, the large-scale production with the advantage of scale economy is still more economical than the 3D printing production mode focusing on "personalization and customization".

(3) Print material restricted

The limitations and bottlenecks of 3D printing technology are mainly reflected in materials. At present, the main printing materials are plastic, resin, gypsum, ceramics, sand and metal, and the materials that can be used for 3D printing are very limited.

Although many homogeneous and heterogeneous materials have been developed for 3D printing, there is still a need to develop new materials, and some new materials are being developed. This demand includes two aspects: first, it is necessary to study the relationship among materials, processes, structures and properties, so as to clarify its advantages and limitations; Second, new testing techniques and methods need to be developed to expand the range of available materials.

(4) Accuracy and quality issues

Because the inherent forming principle and development of 3D printing technology are not perfect, the accuracy (including dimensional accuracy, shape accuracy and surface roughness), physical properties (such as strength, stiffness, fatigue resistance, etc.) and chemical properties of the printed parts can not meet the actual use requirements of engineering, and can not be used as functional parts, only as prototype parts, So its application will be greatly reduced.

Moreover, because 3D printing adopts the additive manufacturing process of "layered manufacturing, layer by layer superposition", no matter how closely the combination between layers is, it can not be comparable with the parts cast by traditional mold as a whole, and the microstructure and structure of the part materials determine the performance of the parts.