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The day before, the market research firm AlliedMarketResearch released a report forecasting of automobile industry 3D printing market. The report points out that by 2022, the 3D printing market for the global auto industry will reach $2 billion 391 million. In the forecast period, Europe will be the main market, followed by Asia Pacific and North America.

The use of 3D printing technology for car enterprises is mainly based on the application of new models and tools. With the increasingly fierce competition in the automotive market, vehicle companies are starting to seek new technologies to reduce the cost and efficiency of materials. Therefore, more and more car companies begin to adopt 3D printing technology to reduce the cost of R & D and innovation. IDC pointed out that in the early half of 2017, the world half year 3D print consumption guide pointed out that most of the 3D printing applications that generated most of the income were concentrated in the field of industrial 3D printing. For example, in 2016, automotive design and rapid prototyping contributed the most important revenue (over $3 billion 900 million).

3D printing is a popular appellation for people to understand. In industrial terms, 3D printing is called "add material manufacturing technology", which corresponds to the traditional "reducing material manufacturing". 3D printing technology greatly reduces the complexity of manufacturing. This digital manufacturing mode can generate any shape parts without complex processes, huge machine tools and numerous manpower, so that manufacturing can extend to a wider range of production people.

Compared with the traditional technology, the traditional manufacturing machine is suitable for large-scale production, components, and is widely used in almost all areas; the current 3D printing is suitable for non functional components of small batch and other complex, mostly used in the manufacture of prototype and mould in the automotive, aerospace and other fields. From the perspective of materials, almost all materials can be used in traditional machining. 3D printing technology is mostly used for plastics, photosensitive resins and metal powders. The advantage of the technology is that the material utilization ratio is more than 95%, and it does not produce waste, and is suitable for complex structures.

In manufacturing technology, 3D printing shows its subversive advantage:

The shape is complex. Traditional machine manufacturing is based on the combination of basic technology, such as cutting, drilling, milling, grinding, casting and forging, and 3D printing technology is an integrated technology, mainly using the process of "layering and stacking". Almost arbitrary and complex shapes can be produced by 3D printing as long as they are designed in a three-dimensional design software.

Level complexity. The traditional processing technology is difficult to achieve in the multi-scale (macro, medium, micro), and 3D printing technology can be realized as atomic printing, cell printing and so on.

The function is complex. For complex parts, 3D printing technology can achieve the whole printing, to avoid a split after manufacturing complex parts by welding forming caused by mass increases and potential quality defects, even to cancel the assembly of complex parts, reduce the weight used in auto parts can not only reduce assembly time and change at the same time. Connecting parts defects.

For example, General Electric has successfully completed testing of its new generation of turboprop engines (ATP). The engine is made up of 12 independent components (more than 1/3 is printed on titanium 3D), which is greatly reduced compared with the original 855 parts, so the weight is reduced by 5%, the fuel efficiency is increased by 20%, the power is increased by 10%, and the maintenance is also simpler.

The digital model of 3D printing directly into the virtual products, greatly simplifies the production process, reduce development cost, shorten the development cycle, so that any complex structural components could be produced, product design to function across the great advance in.

The automotive industry is facing profound changes, such as the traditional internal combustion engine is to pure electric, hybrid, hydrogen fuel battery cars and other clean energy vehicles at the same time, the direction of transformation, combined with the automobile and intelligent network technology more and more closely. With the development of "four modernizations", the appearance, interior and structure of the car have changed, and the process is accelerating. These changes are often innovative, personalized, and small batch, and this situation requires the use of 3D printing technology to provide sufficient support and help.

At present, the 3D printing technology is used in the main car or the new model of the new car. It can't be produced because of:

13D printing technology is restricted to the properties of materials, and the material performance is not stable at present, and the versatility of the material is poor.

2, the cost is high. The cost of industrial 3D printers is from hundreds of thousands of yuan to tens of millions of yuan. The cost of application is too high, which is a major bottleneck for the popularization of 3D printing technology and the development of industry.

The 3 part is from design, manufacture to application. It is not a single person who can do it. It needs auto parts designers, materials R & D personnel, 3D designers and other teams to work together to complete.

The 3D printing application needs to solve the material development and production of Guan Jian components and reduce the cost in automobile manufacturing. In December 2017, the Ministry and other 11 departments issued "additive manufacturing industry development action plan (2017-2020)", put forward clear action plan to 2020, China's increasing material manufacturing industry annual sales income of more than 20 billion yuan, the average annual growth rate of over 30%; in the new car design, trial production phase, using additional material manufacturing technology realization of mold design and manufacture, shorten the development cycle. The core of the important links of special materials, process equipment and other industrial chain is to realize the lightweight of complex and key parts by adopting the technology of integrated manufacturing and manufacturing.