It’s 2020, and additive manufacturing has finally emerged as a mature technology for production in a growing number of sectors. In the last decade, it made a full run of the technological Hype Cycle but has finally arrived at the Plateau of Productivity.

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Despite recent technical progress, many industrial 3D printing programs are still not making the financial returns that business owners expect.

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Often one of the biggest reasons is under-utilization: groups simply not using additive capital equipment often enough to justify the expense. Under-utilization can be caused by a lack of applications or technological inadequacy, but usually it’s the symptom of a much deeper problem that leaders need to address: a severe lack of design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) skills within their engineering organization.

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When designers and engineers don’t know how or when to design for […]

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