3D Printing Gets FAT

By on July 3rd, 2008 in blog

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No, we don’t mean the industry’s been eating too much. Instead we’re talking about a concept recently described by Design News. FAT is an acronym for “Fabricating and Assembly Tools”. Here’s the concept:

  • 3D printers of today often don’t produce objects robust enough for use in retail products
  • However, they do produce objects sufficiently robust to be used in the manufacturing process: jigs, clamps, guides, etc. 

Evidently the market for such tooling is over 10x the value of additive printing itself! The article describes how vacuum manufacturer Oreck produced more than 300 FAT aids, as it has now reached their required levels of accuracy – at least using the FDM machinery used at Oreck.

Via Design News

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

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