3-D Printing Promises to Change Manufacturing - WSJ

3-D Printing Promises to Change Manufacturing - WSJ



The Future in 3-D 


Marry carbon fiber and 3-D printing and things get interesting, writes our technology columnist Christopher Mims. Carbon fiber, a man-made material used in airplanes, race cars and wind turbines, is stronger, ounce for ounce, than steel or aluminum, but is usually expensive and surprisingly labor intensive to make. Now companies are working to make carbon fiber with 3-D printers, opening up possibilities from making light but strong parts for drones and other aircraft to replacing materials in many everyday objects. The chief executive of a company that sells a machine that 3-D prints carbon-fiber composites says: “We give you the strength of metal for the cost of plastics.” And a competing technology aims to replace injection molding with carbon-fiber 3-D printing using the same principles as an inkjet printer. Traditional manufacturing won’t go away, but it may never be the same again.