Quick Summary
• The need for replacement parts that are in limited production—or out of production altogether—will always be a demand catalyst for additive manufacturing (AM). Unless the entire global economy at some...
Additional Context
The need for replacement parts that are in limited production—or out of production altogether—will always be a demand catalyst for additive manufacturing (AM). Unless the entire global economy at some point shifts to using equipment designed to be serviced exclusively with parts produced on-demand, we will forever depend on systems whose replacement parts are more or less eliminated from mass production long before those systems themselves are out of use.
This is of course a key piece of the explanation behind the interest that aerospace suppliers have in AM, with aircraft frequently staying in service well beyond the timeline anticipated upon their initial procurement. The biggest obstacle to leveraging AM in this context lies in the fact that the blueprints for replacement parts so freq