Industrial Production of Finished Products

From its inception until just recently, 3D printing was largely used for prototyping. Today, improvements to technology and metal integration have led to a strong trend towards direct production of finished products. It is thought that 29% of 3D printing applications in 2014 were used to produce finished products.

There are many advantages to using 3D printing to produce finished products:

• It reduces tooling, requiring no tools or models.
• It reduces inventories and storage costs since products are stored virtually.
• It reduces assembly and handling because several assembled parts can be replaced by a single part.
• It means that more complex parts can be made, regardless of quantity, virtually doing away with economies of scale.
• It allows parts to be optimized for use, with no concern for the manufacturing process.