Over the years, we have come to define mass production with AM through different angles:
- Starting at a few thousand qualified parts a year, produced on industrial platforms, with traceability on every unit
- Starting at hundreds of thousands of parts a year produced across hundreds of small machines
- Producing on-demand and tailor-made for each individual.
While these definitions make sense in today’s modern manufacturing landscape, the production economics they imply and the bottlenecks they reveal vary significantly from one company to another. Those bottlenecks also differ between Asian and Western manufacturing ecosystems.
Beyond the production question, for vertically integrated businesses that rely on AM, it’s crucial to understand what it takes to build a (consumer) business on AM: how demand is captured, how a digital fit process replaces a retail one, and if possible, what the supply chain and sustainability case looks like.
Acknowledging the ins and outs of mass production with AM might shape how companies invest, what they promise customers, and where the boundary sits between additive and conventional manufacturing.
That’s the goal of the upcoming Additive Talks session, scheduled for Wednesday, October 28th, from 15:30 to 16:30 CET (10:30 am to 11:30 am EDT).
This session brings together two companies approaching production volume from opposite directions:
Andreas Knoechel, Head of Program Management at OECHSLER AG. Knoechel heads program management for additive manufacturing at OECHSLER. He graduated in Mechatronics from GSO University Nuernberg and has been with the company since 2015. His work includes launching new technologies across product development and manufacturing. His team focuses on scaling additive manufacturing for new products in new industries.
OECHSLER produces at series volumes in Germany and at its Taicang site in China. This gives it a direct view of differences between European and Asian mass-production ecosystems.
Gabe Bentz, CEO of Slant 3D. Bentz has led Slant 3D since 2019, building automated 3D printer fleets designed to produce tens of thousands of parts per week at cost parity with injection molding.
Over the years, we have seen Bentz become one of the most vocal advocates of the argument that scale in additive manufacturing comes from fleet size and design considerations.
Today, the company also produces its own filament. In addition, its API lets developers send orders straight to the print farm.
Does this look like a conversation you would like to join?
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