Plant Services February 2015 issue has a great write up on the uses of metal 3D printing for maintenance.  In the editors corner, Fabrisonic’s President talks about machine sales to maintenance facilities.  Right now the capital costs of metal 3D printers is high enough that owning a machine solely for plant services probably doesn’t make sense.  However, there are numerous service bureaus around the country that can build parts for maintenance and repair.

Later in the article “Maker’s Mark”, Thomas Wilk gives a good overview of existing technologies and how they can be used today to help maintenance and repair operations.  As described in the article, Fabrisonic usually gets involved with repair parts when the tooling for existing parts no longer exists.  If the parts can be made by traditional CNC machining, 3D printing often isn’t the right answer.

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