3D printing London once started as a way to speed up the early stages of product development, which is also known as rapid prototyping. A 3D printing service UK can be used to quickly produce straightforward prototypes. These allow for multiple iterations of a product to arrive quickly and efficiently, which saves both time and money. Rapid prototyping is still the largest application of 3D printing nowadays, but it certainly is not the only application anymore. Many other sectors have started using 3D printing as well, as you can read in this article.

Aerospace

The aerospace industry was an early adopter of 3D printing. The companies usually collaborate with research and academic institutes and have been pushing the boundaries of the technology. For example, additive manufacturing is used quite a lot in the early stages of product development in the aerospace sector. Research and development are extremely demanding and important in this world, for example, to develop processes and materials. This has seen a number of important applications developed for the aerospace industry with the help of a 3D printer. Some of the high profile users in this sector are Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Airbus, and more.

Jewelry

In the past the design and producing process for jewelry has required high levels of knowledge and expertise involving specific disciplines. This includes smithing, engraving, polishing, casting, and forging at a foundry and machine shop. However, due to the arrival of 3D printing, this is not really the case anymore today. There is a lot of interest and uptake to see how 3D printing can and will contribute to the further development of the jewelry sector, which already has developed so much over the years. Creators are now able to use 3D CAD and 3D printing to create jewelry pieces, so the more traditional methods may become less used in a few years.

Food

The food sector is a late-comer to the 3D printing trend, but it is an application that more and more people are getting excited about. It certainly has the potential to become a mainstream application. This is, of course, partially the case since we will always need to eat, while 3D printing is a new way of preparing and presenting food. 3D printing food started off with chocolate and sugar, but it has gone way beyond that now. Meat has already been 3D printed for example, while researchers are looking at printing pasta too.