In this globalization era, technology is the crucial factor to the success of every company. They cannot refuse to adopt the upcoming technology in order to compete in the changing world. 3D printing is regarded as disruptive which tends to replace the conventional printing technology. Even it was not known much at first but now it has been received a lot of attention in many countries.
3D printing has been introduced since 1981 but initially there are few people heard about it. Later it has gained a lot of attention and is defined the meaning by many scholars. It is given a description to be the technology that uses computer aided design to create 3 dimensional object layer upon layer (ASTM 2012). It is able to print any size of product starting from small parts till gigantic office building. (Ben-ner and Siemsen, 2017) As the process is forming the finished product by adding successive layer of material, so it is also known as additive manufacturing. When file is created by computer aided design, 3D printing machine will start to form a product layer by layer until becoming a desired object easily. Molds are not required in the printing process anymore.
There are many types of the 3D printing technology. They have different process and are suitable for various types of materials. Follow the American Society for Testing and Materials, it is divided into 7 types are Vat Photo Polymerization, Powder Bed Fusion, Binder Jetting, Material Jetting, Sheet Lamination, Material Extrusion and Directed Energy Deposition. Generally we may find the different name of this technology but the core process is quite exactly the same. The different names are called by each company for indicating their own technology for marketing reason.
The first introduction of 3D printing is in the narrow circle. The adoption is not in the fast pace. It is only used by some company for prototyping. The company gains the benefits from creating sample for getting approval from customer without real machine implementation. At that time the cost of 3D printing implementation was still high and there were many unable-to-solve limitations. Thus, the adopt rate of implementation is low. Many companies are still reluctant to adopt this technology as long as the economic scale received from traditional manufacturing still outpaces the benefits got from 3D printing.
Later, the increasing number of new entrances and the expiry of patent result in the lower cost to implement this technology. (Ben-ner and Siemsen, 2017) Moreover, an open source 3D printer let people print whatever by themselves. This gradually attracts much attention. Printers are more affordable and can be used to produce products at the cheaper cost. When the unit cost is less than when produced by the traditional manufacturing, more companies are willing to change to the novel technology. The materials that are able to use with 3D printing also increase continuously. There are more alternative materials that can be choose for printing with the 3d printing. Previously, only metal and ceramics could be 3D printed. (Long, Pan, Zhang & Hao, 2017) Currently, materials vary starting from plastic, ceramic, titanium, glass until human tissue.
Presently many countries try so hard to adopt 3D printing. There’s the investment policy to convince company to invest in this innovative technology. Among other countries, there is a high number of using 3D printing in China. They shift from traditional production which has the advantages of economic of scale to the more value-added production. (Wang, Sun, Cobb, Lawson & Sharples, 2016) The united states of America also recognize 3D printing as the important strategy to improve manufacturer. (Schniederjans, 2017)
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