Author: Solivet

We’ve found with years of talking to customers about 3D post-processing, very few have taken the time to quantify the cost of their post-print operations. With most attention paid to the design and build stages of additive manufacturing, this is understandable as post-printing is often an afterthought. But when parts do not depart the printer in a final finished state, there’s an additional cost to make it “customer-ready” that many have not taken into consideration. Today we are seeing more and more customers realizing just how important this post-print step is to getting to consistent part production.

Taking on the task to quantify current post-print costs is where the journey towards the benefits of automation starts. This includes labor rates, cost of damage, and technician and process times. This data frames the current state picture to then calculate the transformative benefits that an automated post-print operation can offer.

Here at PostProcess, we’ve developed a software-based ROI Calculator to help manufacturers step through this analysis. Based on years of experience and hundreds of thousands of benchmarked parts, we’ve built a tool that considers all of the customer’s operational factors and outputs how quickly they can see a return on an automated solution investment as well as realize gains in productivity and cost savings.

First, it starts with current print costs and volumes to help frame how beneficial automation can be depending on scale of operation. The second step is defining current post-print costs. Whether using manual labor or traditional finishing solutions, there are costs to consider regarding technician time, damage rates, and overall process times. From our experience, 95%+ of the time, post-printing is completed with labor-intensive, non-automated processes where inconsistent results don’t meet customer-ready requirements and time-consuming manual labor doesn’t scale.

Step 3 is understanding the impact of automation on post-printing. During this phase, using the customer’s benchmarked data for sample parts run in PostProcess’ machines in our FINISH3D lab, we input cycle times, batch sizes and labor rates for the minimal amount of technician time required. This brings us to step 4 where we see, based on investment cost including machine and consumables, the timing for break-even and then return on the investment. In our experience, customers have seen return in as little as a few weeks with implementation of our automated post-print solutions, and cycle times at a fraction of their non-automated processing.

Intrigued? You should be. Many companies, whether in prototyping or production scale operations of additive manufacturing, have much to gain in productivity and cost savings in the implementation of automated post-printing. Contact us today to learn more.

<- Return to Blog Homepage

Happy New Year to all, as we give you this week’s blog post as a reflection of this time of year when we celebrate the past and make plans for what lies ahead…

As we look to 2018, the impact of Additive Manufacturing seems to be reaching that exciting inflection point. Here at PostProcess, we’re seeing tremendous demand in production-scale post-print inquiries as one proof point of the market’s growth. In believing that the industry will finally put the “M” in AM in 2018, we aim to add our voice to the conversation in 3D printing … it’s not just about getting it printed, but how do you make 5000 customer-ready parts in a week?

Industry experts are echoing this same message. This week’s 3D Printing Industry “What’s Next for 3D Printing in 2018?” article highlights mass customized production, automation, software, and more. The awakening to the need for software-driven automation in post-printing to transform additive manufactured parts into finished goods is arriving.

We’re excited for what lies ahead this year, primed and prepped to solve the post-printing bottleneck with the world’s only automated, intelligent, comprehensive solution. To help the market realize its full potential, we’ll be spreading the good word about our ability to finish all 3D print technologies and materials with a unique combo of software, hardware, and chemistry across a range of part sizes and print volumes.

Looking forward to 2018 as the year we bury the dirty history of post-printing and elevate it to its proper position as an integral part of Industry 4.0.

<- Return to Blog Homepage

If you were to ask those involved in product manufacturing who utilize additive polymers for prototyping, they would tell you the leap to additive for production usage is a big one. Perceptions around accuracy, repeatability, poor quality and labor-intensive post-printing make 3D printing a difficult consideration for production scale. This perception has been formed not because 3D printing technologies are actually inferior, but because part design needs industrial standards in place. This encompasses file processing all the way to post-processing methods that are required to improve material integrity and strength and remove porosity to achieve the highest quality end product.

Even after 100 years of advancements in traditional manufacturing technologies, all parts have some type of imperfection from their method. For instance, in the manufacturing of injection-molded parts, issues often arise in calculations of shrinkage, tool draft, needed gates, and post-processing to remove flashing and surface treatment.

Additive components are no different, with similar imperfections and issues that can result in unsuitable end-use parts. However, additive designs actually provide more versatility with geometries not possible with conventional tooling and the potential for on-demand manufacturing. As the use of 3D printing is accelerating in terms of companies’ increased spending, greater ROI, and utilization of 3D printing as a competitive advantage (“State of 3D Printing”, Sculpteo, 2017), the next step toward large-scale production adoption requires a reality check.

The correct part design, good file processing, and the development of automated post-printing are the realities that, when addressed, will enable 3D printed parts to achieve repeatable, injection-molded quality for end-use. And with these end-use results, 3D printing will deliver significant cost savings in tooling and logistics over traditional manufacturing.

<- Return to Blog Homepage

We know that the best way to tell the story about how our technology drives increased throughput, reduces technician attendance time, and delivers value is with real, hard numbers.

So we put together this actual customer example from the healthcare industry to show how the PostProcess DECI automated support removal solution delivers ROI in a number of ways.

This calculation considers the current post-printing method with a manual water jet spray system and a cycle time of 30 minutes.

With the customer’s current print production of 400 parts per day, the PostProcess DECI automated spray solution offers incredible benefits in:

-increased parts per cycle from 20 to 51
-reduced technician time per cycle from 30 to 4 minutes

along with an overall reduction in cost and percentage of damaged parts.

The DECI system also offers benefits in performing support removal, rinsing, and drying in one large work envelope and is especially suited for FDM, SLA, and CLIP print technologies.

While each customer’s productivity savings will vary, many see a return on investment in a matter of weeks with PostProcess’ automated, intelligent solutions.

Check out the full suite of Support Removal systems here.

<- Return to Blog Homepage

Here at PostProcess, we are proud to be pioneering intelligent, software-driven post-printing for additive manufacturing. Part of our mission is to transform 3D printing with automation and PC-based controls. Check out this recent article with Additive Manufacturing Media that discusses the unique dual functionality of the Hybrid DECI Duo, performing both surface finishing and support removal in one compact footprint, and how our proprietary software is enabling a leap forward in post-print productivity.

Check out the article here.

<- Return to Blog Homepage

There are exciting new developments in 3D printed SLA parts for transparency applications, such as bottles, car lenses, and other geometries. Previously, an SLA printed part would need to be cut in half for sanding, which would then require it to be bonded again. Now, these parts can be finished using an automated post-printing process that is completely hands-free with just two steps.

The first step smooths the part as if thoroughly sanded by hand, but with an automated machine solution and therefore without costly labor. The second step removes the imperfections in the material that tremendously reduce or eliminate light refraction which cause the cloudiness. The intelligent system facilitating this process is capable of running several parts of the same geometry at one time, saving thousands of dollars per month within just this application.

Eliminating the manual smoothing/sanding and chemical treatment for clarity during post-printing reduces the overall cycle time by days, therefore driving savings in labor cost and improving time to market. PostProcess Technologies’ series of Surface Finishing systems uses finely tuned frequencies/energy that are gentle enough for these types of components, with more powerful on-demand energy for the most robust parts or materials.

Learn more about our Surface Finish solutions.

<- Return to Blog Homepage