Consumer Packaged Goods

A wide range of companies in the CPG sector use Markforged 3D printers in their manufacturing operations. These include companies like Nike and Adidas (footwear), Gillette (shaving razors and personal care products), Kohler (faucets and bathroom products), and Steelcase (office, hospital, classroom furniture).

Manufacturers in the consumer goods sector use 3D printing for everything from prototyping, building strong tooling and fixtures, and low-volume production. This can mean:

• 3D printing spare parts at the point of need, which facilitates increased uptime for production lines.

• 3D printing end-use grippers and robotic arm components for automated production lines. Manufacturers can also print unique parts that allow customized machines to fulfill particular tasks, like this can twister.

• Production of consumer goods that require customization or specialized geometries, such as custom insoles or production parts such as high-end sound system exteriors.

• Rapid prototyping to improve and perfect product designs.

For CPG manufacturers, different 3D printer types can be used to solve different manufacturing challenges.

Desktop 3D printers are often used for low-volume production and rapid prototyping on one simple platform. Industrial composite 3D printers can tackle a wider variety of manufacturing challenges with higher throughput and faster speeds, the ability to print larger parts, expanded material capabilities, and oftentimes features such as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered part inspection. Metal 3D printers can bring these benefits to applications that require metal’s distinct properties.

In CPG manufacturing, additive manufacturing creates numerous benefits. It’s a much faster, cheaper, and easier way to 1.) build fixtures and tooling, 2.) arrive at a final product design, and 3.) fabricate custom, or other low-volume production parts without a need for tooling.

Low-volume production parts are much more simple and economical to build, without requiring tooling to be built first like injection molding. It allows complex geometries that are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to achieve otherwise.

As expensive parts that come with long lead times can be replaced for much faster and cheaper, prototyping and production can be accelerated without the risk of being held up by supply chain delays, and availability of spare parts means far less unplanned downtime. By 3D printing parts that have historically been machined, manufacturers can not only cut down costs and improve product designs— but also have more uptime and valuable machinist bandwidth.

Aside from tooling, consumer goods manufacturers use 3D printing to fabricate products such as computer hardware, mascara brushes, custom shoe insoles, and audio equipment components. 3D printed production parts can also be found in snowboard bindings, bike frames, and furniture.

Continuous fiber reinforced (CFR) composite parts as strong as aluminum can easily be printed to replace parts on production lines, act as functional prototypes, or serve as a product exterior. For parts that must be made out of metal, accessible, user-friendly metal 3D printing makes it more simple than ever to procure metal parts fast.

These parts can be printed in materials such as continuous fiber-reinforced (CFR) composites, plastics such as Onyx, Nylon, and PLA, rubber-like materials like TPU, as well as many widely-used industrial metals.

Applications that demand strength and stiffness are often printed with continuous fiber-reinforced composites, such as Onyx reinforced with carbon fiber. TPU is ideal for applications that demand rubber-like properties. Reinforced ULTEM™ 9085 Filament can be used for applications that require very high strength, heat tolerance, and chemical resistance.

For parts that require metal for aesthetic or material properties, widely used industrial metals such as tool steels, stainless steels, pure copper and Inconel are available. While PLA is ideal for many prototypes, strong composites are often used for functional prototypes testing performance.

3D printing allows CPG organizations to solve many manufacturing challenges in a much easier, more economical, and simple way than through traditional manufacturing methods. Through providing the ability to produce a wide range of parts in-house, 3D printing also gives manufacturers a buffer against supply chain disruptions. For many manufacturers, the benefits of 3D printing at the point of need allows production to accommodate projects on much tighter timelines.

3D printing software, through application programming interfaces (APIs), can integrate with core factory systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES).

For example, these integrations can automatically 1.) trigger part replenishment based on demand, 2.) create new records for parts printed, and 3.) provide detailed quality inspection and reporting for 3D printed parts.