Dr. Yu Qingxiao, Deputy General Manager and Head of R&D Center of UnionTech, talked about the development trend of 3D printers in 2021. He believes that 3D printers will face a vertical and diversified market demand.
The development of high-performance new materials will be faster.
Compared with traditional light-curing resins, resins with higher performance in some aspects will continue to be introduced to the market. In the early stages of development, 3D printers were considered to be capable of printing anything, but in fact they ignored the in-depth matching of materials, processes, machinery and equipment, and industry application scenarios.
New materials are not exhaustive. They only need to be applied to a specific scene, but this specific field is already large enough to develop a very powerful branch field for 3D printers. In the coming year, UnionTech will join hands with leading international materials giants to open up greater space for cooperation.
With the deepening and refinement of industry applications, it is necessary to consider changing the track to compete with traditional crafts.
Industry applications are gradually being segmented, and the demand for customized system development for a certain industry has increased. This trend has been the consensus of the industry, but there are still few overall solutions for industry applications on the market. It has higher requirements for equipment, materials, process packages, and intelligent solutions. Therefore, 3D printing needs to consider replacing the track and in-depth market development based on industry needs.
The trend of equipment integration and automation is increasing significantly.
With the gradual maturity of the application of equipment in sub-industry, in certain subdivisions, 3D printing equipment has been used as a new type of production tool on a large scale. Under the current industry 4.0 trend, customers have higher requirements for the integration and automation of 3D printing equipment. Take the orthodontic industry as an example, centralized fluid supply, automatic fluid replenishment, automatic shoveling, and continuous printing are required to effectively improve equipment utilization, reduce technical requirements for operators, and save labor costs.
The demand for clustered 3D printing management has become increasingly prominent.
The interconnection of 3D printing equipment provides interconnected production and intelligent management on the industrial side. Digital marketing solves the connection problem between demanders and printing service providers. Good order management and agile response are also necessary.
Digitization is a very effective way to connect design, equipment, and printing requirements, and it also reduces the barriers and difficulty of participants. The current trend of equipment integration. That is, the interconnection, automation, and convenience of the machines, the multi-screen interaction of computers and APPs, and the integration of materials, process packages, printing equipment, pre- and post-processing, and material adaptation.
UnionTech's 3D printing cloud manufacturing SAAS platform UnionFab has been in-depth research and development, which can help 3D printing factories complete intelligent upgrades quickly and at low cost. Functions include intelligent automatic quotation, customer service order management system, data assistance, intelligent production scheduling, and remote production management. , Equipment digital management, etc., which can quickly improve enterprise customer service experience, factory production efficiency, and company management level.
The automation demand for 3D printing post-processing equipment is increasing rapidly.
The current post-processing requires shoveling, polishing, bonding, coloring, etc., for polishing, because of different needs, there are chemical treatments, sandblasting, vibration polishing, and grinding process treatments. Therefore, effective automated post-processing methods should be formed according to the application to facilitate standardized processing of massive orders and achieve a good balance between efficiency and quality.
3D printers are gradually developing into production equipment, so that small batch production can be realized.
Solving the above five problems, small batch production is already at hand. But are 3D printers ready to transition to production equipment?
At present, the development of 3D printers is still very extensive. On the basis of satisfying the basic market applications, the matching has not been deepened. The industry is completely engaged in price battles in several mature industries, while ignoring the higher requirements for equipment consistency, processing efficiency, and parameter development.
On the whole, the development of an industry is a spiral evolution. A machine is not only required to be more comprehensive in terms of software and hardware intelligence, but also to be more professional and targeted for in-depth industry applications. We believe that the development of 3D printers will be layered, and digitalization and intelligence will bring greater empowerment.
