User:TheAdditiveMan/sandbox

Advantages of 3D Printing
This concept has changed the way that people design products and the overall approach to the design process. There are many advantages of additive manufacturing. These advantages include producing prototypes and rapidly decreasing overall production time, less waste, little to no limitation for design geometry, easier portability, decreasing startup cost, reduction in inventory, and supporting lattice structures. In almost all cases there are fewer, or shorter, steps involved when starting with the design of the product all the way to the post-processing involved. This results in a shorter time to design, prototype, and produce a product. The geometry one can create when 3D printing is much less limited than that of one using subtractive manufacturing. With stretches being made to produce a 3D printing machine capable of 5-axis printing, almost anything can be designed, prototyped, and manufactured within a reasonable amount of time. This is also advancing the field of medicine with lattice structures for soft tissue and bone growth recovery. This is beneficial to those who need a custom product but cannot afford the subtractive manufacturing machining cost, or the geometry cannot be done with a subtractive manufacturing machine. To create a custom product, one does not need to be on the company premises. The only items required for design and prototyping are a computer, a 3D printer, and access to electricity. Additive manufacturing can be used in many ways to help reduce the time spent producing a product by simplifying many processes. This results in cutting down on operational costs spent on tooling and manual labor hours. There is a gradually decreasing startup cost of 3D printing. This is due to new innovations in technology that, in return, allow more organizations to invest in this technology. Companies or workshops that adopt this type of manufacturing can decrease production time, reduce waste, design more complicated geometry, and have the availability of making this anywhere they have access to the required materials. This is my content for the talk page.