Cost Analysis of Automated Additive Printer Farms

Abstract Automated additive printer farms, which operate several printers in parallel and thus increase the productivity, are an efficient way to realize a fully flexible mass production, as has been shown by number of examples. By means specifically developed calculation method virtual representations various farm concepts simulation environment, analyzed regarding cost structure productivity. Also, automated consisting low-cost is compared industrial printer. Subsequently, future scenarios set up taking into account economic technological trends allowing estimation impact on manufacturing costs farms. In this paper, analysis based upon Fused Layer Modeling (FLM) process, but large extent findings can be transferred other processes, for example stereolithography (SL) or digital light processing (DLP).