Aaron Johnson, VP of marketing and customer strategy, Accumold
Having been working at the bleeding edge of product development most of my professional career, I have gotten used to hearing the fanfare that surrounds new and emerging technologies that have the power to change the way things are done for the better and often in radical ways, and digesting a plethora of information to get to the essence of how such disruptive technologies can be used to the betterment of manufacturing outcomes.
Take additive manufacturing (AM) as an example. AM in its many guises (rapid prototyping, 3D printing) has been with us as a technology for over three decades, and it is fair to say that it has been disrupting industry for over three decades. But just how disruptive can a technology be if it is still disrupting over 30 years after it came on the scene. It must be disrupting very slowly and very gently.
Well, AM is quite unique in that over that 30 years it has completed one adoption cycle and become a mature and ingrained technology in industrial prototyping. However, as it has evolved and become more robust, more accurate, more sophisticated, it has become a technology for production, where the demands on repeatable tolerance attainment and surface finish are increasing exponentially.
In fact, it may be fair to say that AM is now on its third adoption cycle, as within the last couple of years, the technology has been refined to such an extent that it can now be used to manufacture microparts with micron features and tolerances, and so is penetrating the micromanufacturing sector and disrupting the way in which miniaturised parts and components can be produced in prototype and production runs. Here at Accumold, it exists as a complementary technology to our core micromoulding technology and so can legitimately be seen as a disruptive technology 30 years after it appeared on the market.
It's an evolving situation
This brings us to the nub of this article. Innovative and disruptive technologies do not just arrive on the market, disrupt, get adopted and become the norm. No, such technologies also evolve, and as they evolve, their ability to disrupt continues, especially where an industry dynamic is constantly requiring something better, or in our case, smaller. So, you need to begin to look at disruption in a slightly different way.
New technologies and solutions arrive on the market to service a need. AM caters for the need to reduce time to market, truncating the time from design inception to marketable products. It also, on a production footing, changes the manufacturing paradigm, not needing tooling, promoting design freedom and facilitating the manufacture of products with hitherto impossible geometric complexity. The underlying demands—innovative parts to market quicker and quicker—will never change, and these demands themselves are disruptive, with technologies like AM providing an initial solution that needs to evolve and develop to keep up with the never-ending need for greater innovation and shorter product development windows.
In the manufacture of precision plastic parts and components, where Accumold wields its influence, the disruptive trend that has led to an array of disruptive technologies is miniaturisation, the need for smaller and smaller parts and components to reduce product footprint and weight, promote minimally invasive surgery, etc. Put quite simply, if industry didn’t want smaller parts, there would have been no demand for the development of micromoulding machines or additive micromanufacturing (µAM) technologies. So again, disruptive demands and trends lead to the development of technologies that can fulfil industry requirements, and industry never stops demanding more. After initial disruption, the disruption continues pretty much forever. Disruption is not an event; it is an ongoing process.
Will there ever be a point in time when industrial manufacturers say, “You know, as of today I don’t want smaller parts and components, I don’t want greater innovation in product geometries, and I don’t want to reduce my product development time”? The answer is obviously “No”. The genie is out of the bottle, and manufacturers will always try to push the envelope.
Precision to me, precision to you
Taking a look at the miniaturisation trend, industry and suppliers like Accumold have been on a journey of disruption for decades. We work in an area of industry where definitions are somewhat vague. We make precision plastic parts and components. But what is precise to one company is not precise to another and has certainly changed over the decades.
The parts we are making today would have been impossible when we started out over 30 years ago. They would have been seen as ridiculously precise, the stuff of science-fiction. Making them science-fact is not just facilitated by a new technology exploding onto the market and changing everything. The disruption is, in fact, a relatively slow process of gradual technological advancement and also the accretion of expertise and knowledge that drives innovation.
But was it market demand that led to innovation or vice versa? Well, for sure, the stimulus came from the market. Industries such as electronics and medical ramped up demand for smaller parts and components to enhance the appearance and functionality of their devices, and so suppliers like Accumold set to work using our expertise to refine technology and process to fulfil demand. Then, over time and with our accumulated expertise, we began enhancing capability to such as extent that manufacturers have found themselves creating parts and components only possible through a constant refinement and increased level of sophistication of technology and process.
Micromoulding
Today, in the micromoulding field, expert companies such as Accumold have honed the art of precision plastic part manufacture to such an extent that in a gradual way we are disrupting precision moulding every day. There are no huge Eureka moments every week; instead, the company has developed such a grip on the production of tiny plastic parts in volume over the three decades that it consistently pushes the envelope, and tolerances are getting smaller and innovative geometries and functionality are being enhanced all the time.
This is not down to one thing. This is not down to the development of one technology enhancement that suddenly makes all previous advancements redundant. It is the accumulation under one roof of design and materials expertise, microtooling expertise, micromoulding expertise, validation expertise and automated assembly expertise. It comes from dedicated teams that have been working together for years optimising process and refining and sourcing best-in-class technologies.
The micromoulding space is highly dynamic. The trend towards miniaturised parts or larger parts with micron features is constantly gathering pace across industry, and the challenges in terms of exacting applications are an everyday experience. While technology is constantly evolving to meet these challenges, Accumold maintains that the real value for customers partnering with us is in the extent of, values of, passion of and experience of the micromoulding team. It is, after all, the team that is able to get the most from the technologies on the table.
The journey continues
So, let’s finish by going back to our old friend µAM, a recent entrant into the precision plastic part manufacturing arena. Do we all now put our hard hats on and wait for this apparently most disruptive of technologies to turn everything on its head? Will we be walking onto our premises in a year’s time to see our hundreds of micromoulding machines being wheeled off to the scrap yard? No, we will not.
We have invested in µAM—more specifically, the Fabrica 2.0 machine from Nano Dimension—but for us, it compliments rather than replaces our existing technology portfolio. It will make the prototype stage of the product development process that much more flexible and quicker for our customers. It will allow us to promote creative geometric complexity and move towards small- to medium-sized production runs, then mass customisation in time. In other words, it is another step in our disruptive journey, a journey we have been on for decades and will continue on for decades to come.
Accumold