3-D Printing: How and Why
Companies of all sizes across many industries are turning to additive manufacturing/3-D printing for product development and manufacturing. Sparked by predictions of its role in a manufacturing revolution and widespread disruption, this enabling technology is being investigated and adopted to improve operations, create innovations and extend competitiveness.
It is no longer a question of whether or not 3-D printing will play a role in your organization. Today the questions are how and why? And once the plans are determined, attention turns to finding the right solutions to meet the goals and exceed the requirements. This simple and obvious approach may become quite complex and involved.
3-D printing is a dynamic industry that continues to exhibit the traits of an emerging technology. The industry and its participants are still in a discovery mode: identifying best practices, profitable applications, realistic approaches and ideal opportunities.
Devising Solutions
For more than 20 years, MSOE’s Rapid Prototyping Center (RPC) has been on this journey of discovery. Bringing together technology, expertise and research, the RPC creates solutions that meet project goals. In the end, RPC delivers parts – models, prototypes, patterns, tools and production goods – while informing and educating.
RPC’s 3-D printing resources allow companies to offload the investigation, avoid trial-and-error attempts and devise workable, cost-effective solutions. RPC matches 3-D printing capabilities to project requirements and pairs 3-D printing with other processes to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities. Projects typically start with conversations and consultations to understand the application and the business drivers. Then the RPC team finds the best approach to deliver results. When these projects go beyond simple models and prototypes, that approach usually incorporates back-end processes to modify the 3-D printed part or use it in conventional manufacturing processes.
Did you know?
MSOE is developing new structures and new composite systems only possible via 3-D printing. These advanced composite systems take advantage of printing materials layer-by-layer to combine two or more engineering materials in a complex, intermeshed shape. The key advantage of these composite systems is attaining the best properties of multiple materials in one object (i.e. combining high-strength inconel 718, high-temperature ceramic, and high-thermal conductivity chromium-copper). Applications range from harsh-environment rocket nozzles to energy-storage systems to bio-compatible medical implants.
The outputs of a successful project are the parts needed for the application and a transfer of the knowledge of how it was done. As a component of an MSOE educational institution, RPC’s charter is to educate companies to understand the 3-D printing landscape together with its goal to stimulate innovation.
Every day, companies are using 3-D printing in creative ways. MSOE’s RPC encourages innovation and promotes and invents new approaches in design and manufacturing. To minimize the financial risk of trying something innovative, RPC has a pay-for-results policy. Should a project fail to produce results, there is no charge; RPC writes off the work as a learning experience.
3-D printing is a powerful tool that will be routinely used by all in design and manufacturing, and enables companies to do things differently. The current challenge is to understand how and why. That is a challenge that MSOE’s RPC enthusiastically accepts.
Rapid Prototyping Center
Technology
• Stereolithography
• Selective Laser Sintering
• Fused Deposition Modeling
• 3-D Color Printing
• 3-D Scanning
Expertise
• Design
• Model making
• Prototyping (fit & function)
• Silicone molding
• Tooling
• Jigs & fixtures
• Thermoforming
• Tool-less manufacturing
It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Likewise, it can be said that a 3-dimensional model is worth a thousand pictures. This demonstrates the power a 3-D model can have in research, development and sales in nearly every industry. MSOE’s Rapid Prototyping Center can help you create models—from full size motor vehicles to dramatically enlarged protein structures—all in extraordinary and accurate detail.
Tom Bray, MSOE Dean of Applied Research
At a Glance: MSOE Rapid Prototyping Consortium
The RPC was formed in 1991 in response to the product development needs of manufacturing companies. Students, mostly undergraduates, are involved in the daily operations of the center which features engineers and researchers who together have more than 100 man-years of direct additive manufacturing/3-D printing experience.
Membership in the consortium satisfies a number of strategic goals such as:
• cost-competitive access to all of the leading rapid prototyping technologies
• networking freely with other engineers, designers, managers and technical professionals in a non-competitive environment
• leading-edge product development, CAD applications, innovative processes and manufacturing technology
• access to and development of new tooling techniques, materials and manufacturing methods and structures
• providing access to a pool of experienced employees who have demonstrated that they understand the performance expectations of world-class companies.
Contact:
Sheku Kamara
Director
(414) 277-7384
kamara@msoe.edu
www.msoe.edu/rpc
Did you know?
MSOE developed a recently patented casting process capable of producing extraordinarily fine metallic features including an array of complex 3-D printed cellular lattice structures. The structures produced can have optimized form to manage mechanical, thermal, electrical and acoustic loads in an unprecedented manner.
Go Beyond with the MSOE MBA
Building upon more than 60 years of offering undergraduate and graduate business degrees, MSOE’s Rader School of Business is now offering a Master of Business Administration.
The graduate from the new MSOE MBA will be a change agent—a driver of organizational improvement and goal fulfillment. This MBA is distinguished by its practical, application-based curriculum. The focus is on developing leaders who can apply tools and sound decision-making practices beginning with the first course and building on these skills throughout the curriculum.
The MSOE MBA offers rich faculty/student interaction and the chance to learn from professors with world-class academic credentials and substantial business leadership experience. The degree can be completed on a full- or part-time basis, with classes delivered in a combination of face-to-face and online formats.
Graduate and Professional Education (GPE) at the Rader School of Business also offers customized training, which serves corporate needs for advancing workforce skills, and includes the PEAK series of professional engineering re-licensure courses. PEAK courses include ethics, project management, new product development, cultural training and hands-on lab exposure to systems, processes and tools for engineering. GPE offerings include public on-site training courses, particularly to managers, engineers and other technical professionals.
GPE also serves in a consulting capacity to regional, national and international business clients to assess a staff’s global preparedness and address shortfalls in global competence and competitiveness. GPE is partnered with qualified and experienced trainers who are well-traveled and often bi- or multi-lingual professionals with extensive experience in training adult learners.
Other master’s programs (see list at right) also are available. Contact the Department of Graduate and Professional Education (GPE), where students will find graduate admission and counseling services and customized, in-demand training for the corporate community.
MSOE Master’s Degrees
• Business Administration
• Civil Engineering
• Construction and Business Management
• Engineering
• Engineering Management
• Marketing and Export Management
• Medical Informatics (jointly offered with the Medical College of Wisconsin)
• New Product Management
• Perfusion
• Structural Engineering
Learn more:
(800) 321-6763
www.msoe.edu/gpe
gpe@msoe.edu
Information Sessions
5 to 6:30 p.m.
April 24 May 29
June 26
July 17
Aug. 14
Register at (800) 321-6763
