Techbuyer's 3D Printing Shop

It has been a year since we heard from the repairs team. When we last checked in, they had just completed building a dust-free environment for the repair of components and were working on developing 3D Printing for certain rare parts. Twelve months on, our small 3D printing farm is now being put to work more than 20 hours a day, three pieces of software have been developed to improve repairs, and the team has managed to double the monthly average of repaired parts. In this first news item of a number over the coming months, we talk to Eugene Melega, one of our talented Electronics Repairs Technicians in the Repairs department, about developments in 3D Printing.

How did 3D printing begin at Techbuyer?

3D Printing/Design was an experimental field the company decided to explore about a year ago. Since then, our 3D Printing section grew, and now we have two printers operating at their full capability for about 20 hours every day.

What are the benefits of developing 3D printing?

The printers have proved to be an extremely useful tool from several points of view. We use them to solve problems related to everyday repairs: making parts to replace the broken ones that are difficult to source or making custom tools that allow us to perform more specialised types of repairs. It also helps us produce the protective items that are shipped out with a new server but are often thrown away after they are unpacked.

What sorts of things can they make?

The printers are used to manufacture a variety of protection devices for IT equipment, like CPU socket blanks, connector covers, blanks, etc. that mechanically protect the most delicate components during handling, assembly, and shipping. We also use them to improve ergonomics by making items like adaptors, tools, tool holders, trays, etc...

What are the business benefits of developing 3D printing?

It is difficult to quantify in economic terms. All the components we make to replace the existing parts are much cheaper than the original, sometimes the difference is more than 10-fold. In general, 3D Printing is very economically convenient, but the process itself is very slow, which must be taken into account.

Another benefit is the fact we have full mechanical design capability. This means we can re-engineer parts that keep breaking by removing the stress concentration points, using different materials, and performing mechanical stress analysis to improve reliability. All our designs are custom and made in-house, which allows us full control and more versatility.

We also use the 3D Design capability for prototyping new tools and mechanisms to improve ergonomics and cut costs/time. We have a whole series of projects we are going to develop and many ideas on how to proceed on this going forward.

What are the environmental considerations of 3D printing?

In terms of plastic materials, we tend to use mostly PLA (which is derived from plants and is biodegradable under specific conditions) and PETG. We will expand this choice in the future, especially for more demanding applications that require additional mechanical and thermal resistance.