84 >
3D What?
By Kenneth van Rensburg | My first encounter
printing is and why I could be getting so excited
with the 3D printing phenomenon transpired dur-
over the model of a steering wheel? (The second
ing a working holiday some years ago in the UK.
question is perhaps a little harder to answer…)
Being a budding industrial designer and a self-con-
Unlike many subtractive manufacturing processes
fessed car nerd, I jumped at the opportunity to
such as CNC, where material is carved or machined
visit the Jaguar factory in Coventry. Besides visit-
away from a block or billet of virgin material, 3D
ing the assembly plant the tour also included a
printing is an additive manufacturing process
visit to Jaguar’s R&D department, which turned
whereby the parts are built up, layer by layer. As
out to be the highlight of my visit. Waiting in an-
each layer binds to the previous one, the cumula-
ticipation, I hoped to see car designers sketching
tive thin layers are transformed into a three-di-
and model-makers vigorously fettling and working
mensional object. Crudely put, it’s what wasps and
away at clay models. Instead, an army of designers
swallows have been doing for ages – building up
greeted me from behind their computers and a
their nests, one layer at a time. This means that
dozen 3D printers were busy ‘growing’ physical
complex shapes, complete with negatives spaces
models of parts they had just designed. Within a
and tricky undercuts can be ‘grown’ into one single
couple of hours the designers could hold in their
piece in a very short space of time. By 3D printing
hands exact replicas of, say, a steering wheel, to
a model, valuable developmental time and costs
assess the part both visually and ergonomically
are saved, fast-tracking one's design to the market.
before committing to tooling and manufacture. To me this was mind blowing – like a Replicator
So why then is it referred to as ‘printing’, you might
straight out of Star Trek! Needless to say, I never
ask? 3D printing is really an umbrella term for a
expected to be running my own 3D printing com-
number of additive manufacturing processes. Many
pany only a couple years later.
of these processes use inkjet print-head technology to deposit layers of material or binding agents to
Now, if you’re not familiar with the technology,
build a 3D model. Unlike a desktop printer, which
you are likely to be wondering what on earth 3D
prints a 2D image onto a flat surface such as a sheet