Whirlpool
You certainly know about Whirlpool, the American multinational home appliance manufacturer. They started to use 3D printing in partnership with Spare Parts 3D. Indeed, the manufacturer is now digitizing its part catalog, to fight against obsolescence. As the company produces a lot of machines, they also need a lot of spare parts and it already has quite a huge catalog. In this case, additive manufacturing can be really useful.
This production method is particularly adapted to the production of spare parts for home appliances. Indeed, due to obsolescence of all kind of machines, we know that spare parts will be needed, and 3D printing will allow Whirlpool to produce enough parts, at a lower cost and on demand.
Porsche
The additive manufacturing technology is also perfect to manufacture car parts. Indeed, it can be difficult to find replacements, especially for older car models. But, by combining 3D scanning, 3D modeling and additive manufacturing it’s possible to produce rare (spare) parts for cars.
Do you know the Porsche Classic division? It is a division that is dedicated to Porsche’s classic vehicles. 3D printing is actually used for the production of spare parts for rare cars. Due to being rare vehicles, their original parts aren’t always being produced or found anymore. In order to have the fitting and accurate working components, they are 3D printed.
Additive manufacturing is a really convenient manufacturing process and quite economical when it comes to small batches. That is precisely what happened for the clutch release lever on the rare Porsche 959. This division used SLM 3D printing technology for steel, light metal, and plastic components to create specific 3D printed parts.
Jaguar
Here is another car manufacturer making the most of 3D printing to manufacture car parts for old vehicles. The company used 3D scanning to recreate the classic XKSS model from 1957. The full recreation took 18 months.
The only difference with the original car was due to modern safety requirements, but additive manufacturing allowed to recreate these rare parts.