Demand for additive manufacturing intensified amid pandemic

January 2, 2021 10:52 am

With the Indian government recognising AM as a strategic manufacturing sector and develop a policy towards the same, coming decade will be of tremendous significance.

Nitin Chaudhari, Partner, Shree Rapid Technologies

Discussing the increase in demand for additive manufacturing processes with the advent of technologies, Nitin Chaudhari, Partner, Shree Rapid Technologies is more optimistic about having a promising outlook of additive manufacturing.

Global metal forming Machine tools market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.2 percent between 2021 and 2026. How do you view India’s contribution in the global market?

With indigenisation and aggressive push towards manufacturing and the geo-political turmoil globally, India seems to be placed well to take the center stage for manufacturing. However, companies need to invest in capacity building, optimising productivity, ensure highest levels of quality assurance and turnaround times to really be able to capitalise in the opportunity. In brief, there is in increasing scope for India to contribute but on a micro level, it’s the individual enterprises which need to take on the onus to ensure delivering excellence on the mentioned parameters.

How far 2D and 3D technologies are being implemented for precision in additive manufacturing?

2D Manufacturing has already been on the rise in India over the last decade. 3D technologies are still in the initial stages of adoption, but has been gaining prominent traction across medical devices, aerospace, automotive, defence, oil and gas and tool and die applications. With the Indian government recognizing AM as a strategic manufacturing sector and with efforts to develop policy around the same the coming decade seems to be of tremendous significance.

What are the latest technologies and machineries being used for the additive Manufacturing process?

Interest in Additive Manufacturing has been on the rise over the last 2 years; in fact the current pandemic year has only intensified industry’s interest even further. Adoption has been across polymer, resins and metal based systems, resin-based technologies like Steriolithography (SLA) / Digital Light Processing (DLP), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Direct Metal Printing via Powder bed fusion using laser as well as metal deposition. The interesting point is that a wide variety of technologies and materials are now being evaluated from a more validating approach as opposed to 2 years ago where the approach was more evaluation. More and more applications, products, materials and designs are being assessed either for replacement of existing areas as well as new development based on AM.

What are your latest product and technology offerings in this area?

Shree Rapid Technologies has been at the forefront of enabling our customers’ requirement. Since January 2020, SRT has piloted Digital Manufacturing Workflows wherein we work with customers and use our Customer Innovation Centre (CIC) wherein most technologies are on demonstration along with application engineers to identify areas of interest and not only recommend appropriate workflows from reverse engineering to scanning to design to different AM technologies including resin, composite, polymer, metal and ceramic to post processing offerings including dyeing, heat treatment, post processing. And all of this is by representing the leaders in their respective field like Zeiss, 3D Systems, Markforged, Fronius, 3D Ceram, Dyemansion, Materialise and a number of OEM’s keeping application at the centre. We believe it’s not about the technology but it’s all about the “part”. The objective is not to come up with a recommendation but in most cases demonstrate the recommendation to instill confidence about the capabilities, at the end of the day “seeing is believing’.