Additive Manufacturing Enabling Better Conventional Manufacturing

When paired together, additive manufacturing and conventional manufacturing technologies can be harmonious and beneficial. Being successful in additive manufacturing within the automotive landscape requires a company to be flexible and diverse and to provide more than one type of solution within their portfolio. At General Motors, we have experience with a variety of manufacturing technologies that all benefit from the support of 3d printing. This discussion focuses on our biggest impacts utilizing plastic and metal printing methodologies. Our component facilities utilize induction equipment that have copper printed components, our vehicle manufacturing plants have an onsite filament printing infrastructure to enable rapid local support of safety and/or performance related items, we also heavily use conformal cooled inserts for high pressure die cast manufacturing. These examples show us that these technologies compliment each other so that we may provide the biggest impact and increase adoption.