Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) and the Maritime World.

The rate at which 3D printers are spreading lately is quite conspicuous. Just search for the number of crowd funding campaign related to 3D printers and it will be evident the attention it is getting. Especially the OLO 3D printer campaign last month grabbed the most attention as it was using smart phone of the user as one of the hardware and more astoundingly it was offering a 3D printer for 99 USD. It seems that we are at the brink of stepping into an era of large scale commercial 3D printer usage and soon enough it can be a basic need for every home. In such a scenario it is interesting to imagine how 3D printers will affect life in general for the maritime world. There are lot of predictions floating in the market of which some are more apparent than others. Also, by the time we reach to the full blown 3D printer era there will be other new technologies which will tag along for a future which might need some vision to envision. Nevertheless, some of the changes around us can be readily perceived.

In case of shipping , it seems that there will be a paradigm shift in the break bulk  (containerized and non containerized) business models as individual retail consumers will steadily shift from consuming finished goods to raw materials. The e-commerce combined with 3D printing will no longer require intermediate logistics to join manufacturer to consumers as both are going to be same or in proximity of each other. The consumer will be able to simply download the 3D printable  file (like STL formats) and send it to the printer at home or in neighborhood depending on the scale and type of printing required. This can be very similar to how we use our current regular printing facilities.

The technical management of vessel can also look very different with 3D printers around. For instance, Maersk lines have already started experimenting with 3D printing spare parts on board. Thus the part suppliers will be adding value by facilitating  printing on board by providing design and knowledge rather than the parts itself. The ports can potentially equip 3D printers for the parts that cannot be printed conveniently  on board ship. This will also encourage suppliers to innovate there design continuously and send upgrades of parts on periodic basis to the vessel operators.

For the  manufactures (both vessel and equipment) the scope of the applicability of the 3D printers seems like an enigma. Soon enough, majority parts in the vessel and equipment will be 3D printed. GE  for instance has already test fired a commercial jet engine with 3D printed parts recently. Many companies  are also using 3D printers for creating the prototypes of parts and ship models already. But as the 3D printing technology will improve and size of printers grow a number of manufacturing assembly lines will dissolve resulting in one single piece of printed part or equipment. The 3D printing will eliminate a lot of manufacturing restrictions thus allowing to manufacture the most optimum designs obtained via techniques like generative design. The example of the generative design can be seen in the image below from Airbus where they tried to optimize the weight and material utilization of its airplane partition resulting in a messy web. The bulkheads for the generative designed ships could easily turn out to be like this. 3D printing makes it possible to manufacture these designs easily.

Such possibilities will act as a catalyst in improving the ship design and future vessels might not look anything like today. Further the digital connectivity between design and production will be much higher. Currently the connect is limited to cutting the ship parts directly from design by feeding data to CNC’s or to assembly via robots etc. With the 3D printing more structures and equipment can be realized directly from design without human intervention. The manufacturers will have to quickly identify models to decide where the balance lies between assembling and printing a part or an equipment or a system or even complete (sub)section. 

3D printing in its current stage is still coping up with challenges of the production time, type of material handling, quality of the production etc. Also, there is a parallel development going on for different types of 3D printing technologies where some dominating over the other for different applications. It looks as if like in the early development stage of printers where dot matrix lead in the beginning and then followed by ink jet and laser etc. Nevertheless, going by the growth of this technology it will not be long before it becomes part and parcel of day to day life and it would be exciting to see how we eventually manufacture and consume.