What are the major uses of 3D printing? What are some of the less obvious uses for 3D printing

Here we collected some examples to show how people used 3D printing and why they chose it for their specific use cases. You can see a full list of interesting 3D printing applications in different industries here.

Aerospace

Engineers in the space & aerospace industries use 3D printing to manufacture high-performance parts. The ability to create topology optimized structureswith high strength-to-weight ratio and the possibility to consolidate multiple components into a single part is particularly appealing.

For example, Optisys LLC is a provider of micro-antenna products for aerospace and defense applications. They used metal 3D printing to reduce the number of discrete pieces of their tracking antenna arrays from 100 to only 1. With this simplification, Optisys managed to reduce the lead time from 11 to 2 months, while achieving a 95% weight reduction.

Automotive

The automotive industry has benefited greatly from the fast turnaround and the ease of customization offered by 3D printing.

Volkswagen traditionally used CNC machining to create custom jigs and fixtures. CNC has typically longer production times and higher cost. The same jigs and fixtures could be 3D printed overnight and tested on the assembly line the next day. Feedback from the operators was incorporated almost immediately and a new jig was ready to test the next day until the perfect tool was created.

Industrial tooling

The development of new 3D printing materials with high heat resistance and stiffness, combined with the ability to create custom parts quickly and at a low cost, pushed 3D printing to find multiple applications around industrial tooling.

For example, 3D printing is used today to manufacture low-run injection molds. These molds are used to produce a few hundred parts (compared to the 10.000+ of metal molds), but come at a fraction of the cost of a "traditional" mold and can be manufactured overnight. This makes them ideal for low-volume, low-cost production or small tests runs before full-scale manufacturing.

Healthcare

Did you know that today in the US hearing aids are manufactured almost exclusively using 3D printing? In fact, the companies that did not adopt the technology, very fast when out of business, as they could not keep up with the competition.

The healthcare and prosthetics field has benefited greatly by adopting 3D printing. Custom shapes, such as hearing aids, no longer need to be made through manual labor. With 3D printing, they can be manufactured quickly from a digital file (by 3D scanning the patient's body, for instance). This brings substantially lower costs and lower production times.

Education

The 3D printing technology has great potential in educational environments. With 3D printing, the course subjects can be brought to life through scaled replicas. This equips the students with practical (and very valuable) real-life experience.

Aerospace engineering students from the University of Glasgow worked together with Rolls Royce to create a functional 3D printed jet engine model. The model gives instant feedback to the students about changes they make during it operation, helping them gain very valuable practical experience.

P.S. If you want to learn more about the technology and its applications, I wrote a full guide on 3D Printing. You may want to check it out: What is 3D printing? The definitive guide