3D printing empowers manufacturers big and small to innovate and reduce time to market. But not every manufacturer owns a 3D printer. Those that don’t turn to sources like In’Tech Industries (In’Tech) to fill that need. In’Tech specializes in manufacturing plastic parts and offers engineering, tooling, injection moulding and additive manufacturing services. According to Jason Lilla, In’Tech regional account manager, there’s a growing number of manufacturers that need additive manufacturing capabilities for rapid prototyping, or a bridge to production before final injection moulding is complete. “We’re interested in a share of that market and hopefully we can help people get their parts quicker for testing fit, form and function,” said Lilla.
The hurdle, however, is getting beyond the onebuild-per-printer paradigm. Individual 3D printers have a limited production capacity per build, and require human intervention to remove the parts and initiate a new job. To serve more customers with expanding production needs, that formula has to be scaled up dramatically.
Increased throughput is one benefit, but the real beauty of the Continuous Build Demonstrator is a new level of 3D printing automation. It prints the parts, ejects them and starts a new build without human intervention. Multiple jobs can be printed and print queues are automatically apportioned, based on printer availability, maintaining an efficient build schedule. If a print engine experiences a problem, the downstream jobs are automatically distributed to another available printer. “We like that it’s plug- and-play, so if there are any issues with a print engine, it can be easily replaced with another unit and be back up and running very quickly,” said Neilson. In’Tech sees this innovation as a boon for their ability to meet increasing production demands. It gives In’Tech’s customers what they need, when they need it, through an automated, continuous-production process.
That means making parts in sufficient quantities so injection moulding customers don’t incur the expense of hard tooling for limited production runs. This lets customers analyse and make adjustments as needed, avoiding the cost to modify tooling. Instead, they can quickly adjust designs and get the parts they need, typically same day or the next. Mark Neilson adds that for some applications, the quality of the Demonstrator parts are near-injection moulding quality. Even in the initial stages, this new 3D printing paradigm has already shown its promise for In’Tech Industries. “We’re excited to get this going and start to see it run full-form and we’re excited to expand it,” said Neilson.
