Innovation at the Frontier

You could be forgiven for thinking 3-dimensional printing (3DP) sounds a little far-fetched. It’s not quite printing as most of us know it, and going straight from the drawing board to a prototype you can pass around the room perhaps conjures up thoughts of a future age better seen in science fiction movies. But in fact such technology really exists, enabling companies to speed up design and production in the midst of what many call a design revolution, and it’s recently made inroads in Indonesia. Just how far it goes may be up to the ability of Indonesian industry leaders to think both outside and inside the new box.
3DP is a form of rapid prototype creation whereby a 3D computer rendering of a product can be quickly assembled in three dimensional form. A 3D printer, or “additive fabricator,” does this by analyzing the design data and “printing” layer upon layer of materials such as plaster powder, sand, and cellulose, until it’s built a small product prototype. It’s a bit like brick-laying, where
the bricks are a fraction of a millimeter thick and laid down by a machine that costs about
as much as a luxury car. Add enough layers and bind it all together and you’ve got a model of just about anything you can put into a computer-aided design (CAD) program: sports shoes, pistons, heart valves, electronics, or the kitchen sink. Printers vary in price, materials used, speed of processing, and prototype sizes, but the end result is more or less the same: a small model to be used for presentations and design proofing.
Chief among the benefits is the speeded-up time-to-market, as 3DP shortens product design time by allowing the faster production of prototypes, potentially allowing a company longer selling periods and time and resources to turn out more products every year.
Indonesian 3D printing pioneer PT Design & Teknik, a mechanical engineering company in Bandung, has been using the technology for three years, recently to make automotive prototypes for Suzuki and metal casing moulds for PT Stampo Prima Akurasi.
It says the technology is starting to catch on and change local design practices. “One of our observations is that product development in Indonesia is very slow, and it’s mainly caused by designers being unable to present accurate ideas of their product in real time,” says company head of marketing Syahri Andi Rivai. “As a result, many companies in the past have gone overseas for rapid prototyping needs to Korea, Japan, and Singapore, or other places where the technology has advanced into the mainstream. Nowadays, though, some of them have already turned to us.”
For example, a housing development company used to go to Singapore to create the mockup models of building developments it used for sales and marketing. Today the same company makes the trip to Bandung.
“Orders are increasing, although still below our targets because companies have yet to become aware of all the benefits of 3DP technology. University engineering and design students are starting to learn about it, though, and their arrival in the industry will likely change the shape of things.”
Regionally, Indonesia is still far behind in 3DP technology among Southeast Asian nations, with the smallest number of both 3DP service providers and users. Japan, China, and Korea have the most, with Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia also advancing.
“This significantly affects their [other countries’] designers’ ability to create products and raise the number of new products each year. Their customers end up with more choices, and the company ends up with a better image,” Rivai says.
“Ultimately it stimulates all industries to become more competitive.”
In Jakarta, a handful of companies offer 3DP services, including the Tangerang based Serempak, which, in the last year, has also doubled as a reseller of 3D printers.
“Most of our business is on the services side, since the printers are an expensive investment for smaller companies,” says the company’s managing director. “Bigger companies that need regular prototypes, like Adidas, purchase printers from us.”
He says the company has seen a steady increase in need for its printing services, with recent orders coming from home furnishings, footwear, automotive parts, and home accessories companies, both for conceptual modeling and rapid prototyping.
The technology, he says, speaks for itself. “Compared to current systems for assembling prototypes, the 3D printers are 5 to10 times faster, and they provide fullcolor and high-definition resolution, and multiple models can be simultaneously produced for a lower per-model cost.”
“Currently many of our customers consider the return on investment too far off to make purchasing a unit worth it. If 3D printer manufacturers find a lower price point, though, I believe many competitive companies will invest in a printer of their own.”
Worldwide, prices will likely continue their downward trend until even small developers
can afford to design in-house. Further on the horizon, affordable printers could move beyond
today’s prototype production and begin producing final products of their own.
Let that be a note to Indonesian industry everywhere: Today’s designers are a printer away from being today’s producers. And with a new generation of engineers, designers, and printers at the ready, Indonesia industry may be poised for a faster age, at home, thinking about the possibilities of the new box.

Ben Otto
Contributor
(Competitiveness at the Frontier, Mar 2008)