3D Printing: From Hype to Reality

What’s Next for Disruptive Technology Making Inroads in the Maritime Space?

By Amy McLellan

(8-min read)

The concept of the hype curve exists because innovation is rarely predictable, while human behavior almost always is. New technologies always come with a tail of unforeseen complications – ranging from the technical to the commercial, the regulatory to the ethical – and it is the human responses to these setbacks that are so predictable they can be plotted on a hype chart.

Digital technologies have put these responses on a fast forward loop. New advances come at us at hyper-speed: the Internet of Things, Blockchain and, more recently, Generative AI and the metaverse have all been heralded as revolutionary technologies set to unleash game-changing disruption.

The predictions are not necessarily wrong, they’re just early, with these breakthrough technologies just not changing the game as quickly, nor at a scale that matches the initial hype. And so it is with 3D printing, which ten years ago was hailed as the beginning of the end for traditional supply chains.

Fast forward to 2024, however, and supply chain disruption has come not from futuristic ondemand manufacturing, but from far more traditional forces: disease, war and inflation. So where are we now on the hype curve?

The Post-Hype Reset

First, let’s clear up the terminology. Additive manufacturing is the industrial term, and it is slightly different from 3D printing. 3D printing involves the creation of objects by adding layers of material while additive manufacturing involves the creation of objects that might or might not be in layers.

Additive manufacturing encompasses a broader range of techniques, including industrialscale processes like laser sintering and electron beam melting, while 3D printing is commonly used for rapid prototyping and hobbyist projects. Indeed, 3D printers can be bought for any home for around £200 from Amazon, with amateur tech enthusiasts machining pieces for role play games or DIY projects.

Dr. Eva Junghans, a senior principal engineer at classification society DNV, agrees that additive manufacturing is a better description for the process as compared to subtractive manufacturing such as machining.

“When coming to metals, the term “printing” may also be misleading,” she said. “The involved processes are not that quick and easy and a component cannot simply be printed.”

After a slow start, additive manufacturing is making inroads in certain sectors, particularly in aerospace and healthcare. The maritime and offshore industries, however, are taking a more cautious approach.

“It is definitely picking up in the maritime industry with more end users coming onboard and adopting additive manufacturing technologies for the procurement of spare parts,” said Elaine Toh, marketing and communications manager at Pelagus 3D, a joint venture between thyssenkrupp-Wilhelmsen, which aims to make better custom, standard, and obsolete spare parts available on-demand.

“We believe that with the everchanging supply chain landscape and the need for quicker turnover of spare parts, better part performance and the increase in obsolete/legacy parts, the usage of additive manufacturing will become more mainstream in the maritime and offshore industry.”

First, however, the technology will need to overcome the inherent inertia, born of caution, that is the hallmark of the maritime and offshore sectors. This means building knowhow, standards and, with that, trust.

“The maritime industry is pretty traditional and many are uncertain about using new manufacturing methods as well as the consistency and the quality of the additive manufactured products,” acknowledged Toh. “This can hinder adoption. However, with the increasing success stories, certification supports and standardization for part manufacturing, we believe that many more maritime and offshore end users will understand the benefits of ondemand manufactured spare parts.”

Safety First

The safety and quality of AM components are underscored by the technology’s penetration in aerospace and healthcare, both highly regulated industries. Maritime and offshore sectors are proving slower but classification societies are working hand-in-hand with operators to grow the knowledge base.

“For the verification of a component’s integrity, a thorough qualification of the AM workshop is essential and quality control on the component through destructive and non-destructive testing is required,” said Ramesh Babu Govindaraj, senior principal specialist, material, welding and additive manufacturing at DNV.

“There are suitable industrial standards already in place, but in practice designers or end-users can be overwhelmed by the amount of proposed tests and may struggle to determine which tests actually need to be performed for the intended application. Therefore, DNV has established its own rules and qualifications programs which are more suitable for the certification services that DNV is providing.”

A further challenge is that – except for the aerospace and automotive industries – long-term experience for components manufactured by AM in comparison to casting or forging is lacking. “This means the standards currently in place do not have the statistical database as exists for traditional manufacturing routes and the fatigue and corrosion behavior of AM materials can differ,” Govindaraj added.

Having an independent third party certifier is key, particularly if the AM component involves optimized design. “AM can unlock components that combine different materials which cannot, or only with huge effort, be combined using conventional processes, such as valves with a body made from low-cost materials and coated with an expensive corrosion resistant material using AM,” he said.

There are also cost considerations, with AM typically costing more at this stage in its maturity. Proponents are hopeful this will come down as the technology becomes more mainstream. “With the increasing adoption and usage of additive manufacturing in various industries, there is a growing increase in suppliers which can help reduce the overall costing,” said Toh of Pelagus 3D.

“Moreover, with the ability for additive manufacturing to print parts without MOQ [minimum order quantity], it can reduce the overall cost for vessels when only a specific component is changed instead of a whole equipment.”

These higher upfront costs can be offset by lower costs elsewhere, of course. One of the big attractions of AM is its potential to deliver parts that are lighter weight or which use less raw material and energy consumption. This is key for companies across the supply chain looking to lower their carbon footprint.

Indeed, in future, ships may not even need to head to port for their AM spare part. In May 2024, ABS and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) signed a “first of its kind” agreement to pave the way for the onboard manufacture of spare parts at sea, with the aim of manufacturing marine parts by 2025.

A Learning Curve

As a first mover, Pelagus 3D is learning these lessons first hand. “When we started off in 2019, we were making small polymer parts and trying to get end users to understand the benefits of ondemand manufacturing and how additive manufacturing can benefit their spare parts supply chain,” said Toh. “However, fast forward to 2024, we are currently making big metal parts and end users are currently more open to adopting additive manufacturing in their business model.”

She said lessons learned include improving awareness, getting suppliers that are certified and qualified to produce spare parts and also working with OEMs to produce their parts with the relevant certifications and standards.

There’s no doubt the technology can deliver impressive results, not just in delivering a lighter, quicker spare part but also enhancing its performance in the process. In October 2023, Pelagus 3D used AM for a return oil stand pipe on the TYLSA RoRo vessel owned by Wallenius Wilhelmsen.

Working with Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Pelagus 3D was able to determine the optimal component shape for the return oil standpipe, a crucial part on diesel engines, with the new design combining 10 traditionally manufactured parts into one additively manufactured part.

This redesign enhanced the part’s performance by improving flow efficiency by delivering smoother channels, with no sharp edges. The part was fabricated in stainless steel using an AM technology called Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), which uses lasers to fuse powdered materials into a solid structure.

Through AM, the weight of the spare part was reduced by more than 90%, from 75 kilograms to 8 kilograms, which eliminated the need for a crane during installation. The lead time for fabrication was reduced to 15 days as compared to 135 days using traditional manufacturing, vastly reducing vessel downtime.

Cutting Out the Breakbulk Middle Man?

For standardized parts, such as simple bolts, AM is unlikely to ever out-compete conventional manufacturing methods because of the higher costs. It’s the complex, the specialist and the hardto- access parts that are best suited to AM – and sometimes that means the parts that are the bread-andbutter of the breakbulk business.

Take wind turbines, for example, which involve many bits of specialist hardware that involve long and complex supply chains to reach remote sites and have created busy order books for many breakbulk carriers. These are big bits of highly specialized hardware, which need constant maintenance to optimize uptime – and given remote locations and protracted supply chains, it makes sense for manufacturers like Vestas to investigate the potential of AM.

The Danish renewable energy giant has been working with Berlinheadquartered BigRep, which has developed a large-format additive manufacturing system. Vestas tasked BigRep to produce jigs and fixtures to position the vital lightning protection system within the wind turbine’s blades, a job that requires precision accuracy given the blades are highly susceptible to lightning strikes.

Conventional steel jigs and fixturing tools face challenges with deformation and damage can be hard to detect, but AM-produced advanced polymerbased tooling proved to be resistant to deformation while also fracturing under duress so that faults could be detected early on during turbine assembly. The result was a three-week reduction in lead time and an impressive 72% cost reduction in manufacturing these crucial components whilst surpassing the accuracy standards of traditional tooling.

It remains, however, a small piece of the wind turbine supply chain. Indeed, if the initial idea of “printing onsite” thrilled industry, in practice it is still traditional manufacturing and the heavy-lift cranes, deck carriers and barges that install these turbines that are doing the heavy lifting of the energy transition.

There’s no doubt that AM is an impressive and disruptive technology but its hype curve still has some way to go before it reaches the slope of enlightenment, much less the plateau of productivity.

Thyssenkrupp, HHI and Vestas are members of the Breakbulk Global Shipper Network, a worldwide network of companies and executives involved in the engineering, manufacturing and production of project cargo. The next in-person meet-up for BGSN members will be at Breakbulk Americas 2024 on 15-17 October in Houston.