Sustainably Manufacturing Your Spares with 3D Printing

Green initiatives for companies are commonly viewed as a necessary additional cost to protect the environment and ensure environmental sustainability.

At Spare Parts 3D, we develop 3D printing as a sustainable manufacturing technology that mutually benefits both the business and the environment. We believe that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is crucial, and that is why we aim to create a sustainable business together with our clients through 3D printing innovations of spare parts.

Avoid waste of materials or resources

One of the first things with which people associate sustainability would definitely be waste of resources. Spare Parts 3D leverages 3D printing to digitalize inventory of spare parts to minimize the amount of waste.

From subtractive to additive manufacturing

Traditional manufacturing processes are mainly subtractive, meaning that they trim off or remove the unnecessary portion of raw materials to form the final products, leaving some of the removed materials unusable. 

On the other hand, 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is considered the more sustainable manufacturing process since it only deposits or adds the necessary materials layer by layer to make an object. No molds or waste are craved away and therefore the amount of wasted material is minimized.

From physical to digital inventory

To avoid having excess stock level, spare parts managers must optimize the level of spare part inventory; however, managing the inventory of spare parts can be quite challenging due to its unpredictability.

The unpredictability of demand for spare parts stems from the lack of a seasonality or trends for spare parts managers to analyze. As a result, many still hold the mindset of holding on to as many spares as possible in case they might need it someday and storing them doesn’t seem to cost anything. Unused spare parts will then be discarded and this is certainly not socially responsible.

Furthermore, having a physical inventory incurs numerous costs, such as premium for insurance, which is calculated based on total inventory value, wages and utilities for maintenance. These administrative costs add up to approximately 20% or more, resulting in an overall net loss if a spare is not consumed or sold quickly and this is often the case. By experience, up to 30% of spare parts are disposed annually from lack of use and mounting warehousing costs.

With its 3D printing solution, SP3D provides the ideal solution by printing spare parts on demand, creating zero wastage in terms of both producing redundant spares and energy spent on warehousing. When fully adopted, 3D printing will turn physical inventories into digital ones, benefiting business owners and the environment.

Lengthening the Product Lifetime

Optimizing the energy efficiency of manufacturing home appliances is a well-known challenge for manufacturers. However, lengthening the lifetime of home appliances contributes to the same goal but is not as strongly emphasized as improving energy efficiency.

The keys to lengthening product lifespan are a robust manufacturing process to produce quality parts and the ease of reparability. Home appliances should be repairable in most circumstances with the right parts and know-how. Attention has to be paid to reparability right from the design concept stage so that any repair can be simple with accessible parts and streamlined processes.

RREUSE, a European umbrella organization for social enterprises, pointed out that the primary obstacles to repairing home appliances are the lack of access to spare parts and the cost of spare parts. Traditional plastic manufacturing processes, such as injection moulding, is widely used worldwide but highly ineffective when it comes to producing small production batches. As such, it is often uneconomical for plastic manufacturers to supply old and long tail spare parts for after-sales service.