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Metal AM for spare parts
Buying time with digital spare parts: Opportunities for metal Additive Manufacturing Spare parts keep the world turning, and their complex supply chain is an industry in itself, specifically designed to get trains moving, ships sailing, and industry producing. But this is an expensive business, and one driven by calculated risk. Do you reduce your profits by stocking every expensive, highly engineered part that you might need, even though the chances are that most will never be used? Here, Joseph Kowen considers if digital part inventories, in conjunction with metal Additive Manufacturing, can transform how the spare parts industry operates. What are the opportunities, and how are early adopters already taking advantage of them?
The AM industry is always on the lookout for the next big application and observers of the industry are obsessed with the search for applications where AM makes sense. There are relatively few verticals where AM makes a broad, segmentwide business case for its use. The industry which has arguably adopted AM most broadly is dental, although only a small part of that is metal AM. The key characteristic of the dental industry that drives its adoption is the high value of small, custom dental parts. Medical implants have also proven to be a fertile area for metal AM due to the ability to build complicated, lightweight parts that mimic the geometry of the natural structures that they replace. Aerospace also offers some potential, but this is for specialised applications – more space, less aero. We have all heard of cases where AM has saved the day when reverse-engineered or urgent parts are needed. Often, these stories have been based on opportunity, rather than part of a wider business strategy. Could it be that ‘spare parts by AM’ offer as much potential as
Vol. 7 No. 4 © 2021 Inovar Communications Ltd
any of the most successful AM applications on the market today? What are the parameters for this opportunity? What are the hurdles? And who is doing what? In this article, we’ll attempt to answer some of these questions with an overview of a topic that crosses typical segment lines.
The dream of digital parts warehouse In March 2021, the world watched the unfolding drama of the giant container ship Ever Given, which became stuck in the middle of the Suez Canal on its way to Europe. Its
Fig. 1 The Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal on its way to Europe, blocking the lifeline that delivers an estimated 12% of global trade by volume (excluding oil) annually
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