Five reasons why 3D printing is at the core of sustainability right now
It is no coincidence that 3D printing keeps growing strongly in the 2020s: it converges with several topical sustainability trends. While the additive manufacturing process itself carries many environmental advantages, by far the most impactful benefits come from what the technology and ideology enable for 3D printing customers.
1. New advent of repair culture
As the media increasingly reports, companies in different sectors are opening new repair shops and generating new business from these services. The clothing industry, for example, has taken a step forward from disposability towards the revival of restoration and a culture of repairing. Finland-based Swappie, in turn, has gained great popularity by selling used and refurbished iPhones. Our willingness to throw things away is clearly in a state of flux.
In 2022, The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra identified the return of the repair culture as one of the signals of the future. Interesting aspects of the trend were also raised by The Guardian in its article Back for good: the fine art of repairing broken things.
3D printing could play an important role as an enabler of extended machine and tool lifecycles. Worn and broken parts can be reverse engineered and manufactured quickly using additive manufacturing. This is also reflected in the growing popularity of our own spare parts service.
A co-creation workshop for developing spare parts
2. Continuous improvement
Many are familiar with the leisure hobby of revamping – in business, this idea can be referred to as upgrading which, in turn, is part of the wider idea of continuous improvement. This actually marks a direct continuation of point 1 above: when making replacement parts, we can do more than just produce a one-to-one identical piece. While making a new item, it can also be revamped and improved, thus implementing the Better Parts mindset.
With 3D-printed spare parts, it is often possible to improve the part compared to the original. Once the cause of breakage or wear is known, it can be addressed through design. Changes can be made to aspects such as the weight, durability or structure of the part.
The scale of these changes can also vary from tiny to huge. Spare parts printing – whether with improvements or as is – concerns virtually every village, city and company where any kind of machinery is used, including small workshops, agriculture, large-scale industry and so forth. Giant printers are already used to 3D print very large components for the energy sector, for example.
3. Energy saving
Upgrades and improvements to production machinery and equipment can save energy, and they are particularly important in industries such as energy production and the process industry – no matter if the product being processed is milk or pulp.
In the bigger picture, the key question is how much energy it takes to run a given process. An optimised fuel nozzle, for example, can influence the energy efficiency of a combustion process and thus the overall environmental impact.
Even the impacts of small energy efficiency improvements naturally multiply with increased volumes and longer operating times.
4. Mobility and transport revolution
Passenger traffic and freight transports are key issues in terms of environmental burden. Goods that could be produced nearby are still transported back and forth between regions and countries. This has been largely due to the fact that manufacturing the part locally has been either impossible or unprofitable from a cost-efficiency perspective.
Today, many favour local food, and local production overall is a growing trend. Local service helps to save both time and energy required for transport while also boosting the local economy.
In passenger traffic, new manufacturing methods can bring significant benefits through improvements such as lighter and more energy-efficient structures. NASA, for example, uses 3D printing. Every kilogram reduced in weight helps to save fuel, costs, and operating life. The same principle applies to basically anything that moves.
5. Free innovation
The climate crisis, biodiversity loss and other grave environmental concerns require us as humankind to rethink many aspects of life. Knowing that we are no longer bound by the traditional constraints of manufacturing supports open-minded innovation and a culture of agile experimentation.
Each company can gain genuine benefits by considering what they can do to create more sustainable and responsible solutions. Free innovation, both independently and together with others, provides a learning point and leads to a better understanding of how business solutions can be implemented in a more sustainable and energy-efficient way.
3D printing, for its own part, helps develop solutions faster and with fewer resources and a lower overall threshold. This also means that product development processes can be carried through with increased efficiency. Exploring the potential of 3D printing can open up a whole new world of manufacture, increase the company’s human capital and expand its business horizons.
What’s more, we may also come to see all-new business models emerge around the potential unleashed by 3D printing.