Being extraordinary: Bringing 3D printing to the Middle East

The media makes plenty of noise about how 3D printing hype has spread across Europe, the US and China, but news of adoption of this disruptive technology in the Middle East has been almost silent.

D2M Solutions - a Dubai-based manufacturing solutions provider - may not be the loudest 3D printing business on the scene, but that does not mean it is not working hard to establish itself and additive manufacturing within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

MEP met D2M at ArabPlast in January 2015, where we spoke to Managing Director Alex Papantoniou about the state of the additive manufacturing industry in the Middle East and where D2M sees itself in the wider market.

Papantoniou explained the Middle East is still some way behind Europe and the US when it comes to understanding 3D printing as a tangible manufacturing technology. The region "does tend to be a bit further behind", he said, adding that because the GCC is traditionally a contract manufacturing market, 3D printing has not been given the time or investment necessary for it to find its way into the supply chain.

However, this contract manufacturing system - whereby companies outsource to the manufacturer who will produce their product for the best price - is no longer sustainable and the industry has to adopt a change of mindset to survive.

"Until this happens," said Papantoniou, "We have focused on key areas such as obsolescence, that is parts that no longer exist."

Bringing parts back from the dead

Oil, gas and aerospace are the key sectors with a need for obsolete component manufacture in the Middle East and D2M helps these organisations to capture the data they need by creating a copy using 3D scanning or a new design. D2M then controls the intellectual property and helps the customer select the best way to produce the part: be it by 3D printing, machining or casting.

"One of the best examples we have is from a Saudi Arabian defence organisation", said Papantoniou. "They had a very expensive piece of equipment which had been in use for some time but the original manufacturer went out of business so there was no way of replacing the part. One of the engineers scanned the part and printed it the same day, using it in the machine, prolonging the lifecycle of that machine for another 10 years.

"We have similar cases in defence with parts that either don't exist or are very expensive to

make. They’re not critical components but they’re a big headache to source and make."

Despite the growing number of laser welded and binder jetting metal 3D printing technologies on the market, D2M Solutions' 3D printing strategy remains firmly implanted in plastics.

"We haven't adopted it yet because it’s not an industry-certifiable process [in the Middle East]. No industry would use a 3D-printed metal part that hasn’t been made by the OEM themselves with the right certification. There's a lot of hype, but not much knowledge so we limit our offering to what the market is actually ready for," said Papantoniou.

"There are a lot of bad messages. People see YouTube videos and think we can 3D print organs. I've had three people come up to me today in fact asking about 3D-printed organs."

In addition to oil and gas, and defence, D2M works in architecture, aerospace and gets requests to build custom parts for vehicles.

"You can't avoid it here, even if it is distasteful sometimes," he joked.

Offering something on a higher level

D2M works in educating the GCC about additive manufacturing as part of its operations as a service bureau.

"Traditionally this market is a trading market. All the Arab nations have been traders and this isn't going to change soon. The biggest problem we have in this region is the fact the industry is not big enough to sustain a company that can only specialise in one field. So if we were only selling 3D printers that wouldn’t be sustainable even though we work across the whole GCC.

"We counter this by offering something on a higher level that can influence organisations."

D2M Solutions' mission at ArabPlast - just as its mission is outside of the show environment - is to educate the Middle East about 3D printing.

"People don’t understand that a $2,000 machine won't do the same as a $100,000 machine and we need to push people into thinking the right way about this technology because of course it has its limitations. There's a lot of misrepresentation of the capabilities [of additive manufacturing] and there's a lot of wrong messages being passed either by OEMs or by social media," Papantoniou explained.

In addition to educating companies on how 3D printing can be best used to fit their needs, D2M Solutions is pushing for greater adoption of the technology in schools and colleges as an aid to studying engineering, manufacturing and mathematics.

"It's perfect to teach these concepts and it gets people excited about engineering - a very small percentage of people are graduating from university here in a subject to do with engineering compared with, say, religious studies. There is a shortage of engineers and in many cases the engineers we do have are not aware of the latest manufacturing technologies, which does not benefit local industry."

The correct buzz

As a service bureau, D2M is helping extend the availability of 3D printing technology, particularly via its Phantom Systems service, which offers the customer training on file processing allowing them to then buy run time on one of the company’s high-tech Stratasys machines.

"The service links a company to a 3D printer and they buy run time on our machines at a discounted price because they are doing their own file processing. So they buy blocks of hours and they use our installation to save them on capital investment. We send them the parts once they are done," said Papantoniou.

Papantoniou came up with the idea due to the fact the company was receiving too many files that were not good enough to be processed for 3D printing, but now the team believes the market is ready.

"Our main goal is to be extraordinary and to make sure we address our customers' needs 100 per cent and be as unobtrusive as possible. We don't tell our customer how to do their job, but we can help them to do it better. We're not reinventing the wheel."

As with the 3D printing hype witnessed in Europe and the US, fierce competition has broken out amongst machine manufacturers (from the little ABS-extruding desktop machine manufacturers to the vast sand casting system producers that fill entire warehouses) and the associated technology and service providers - including bureaux.

"We're not afraid of competition because we don’t make over-optimistic promises," said Papantoniou.

He added that D2M's focus in terms of market share is to grow its customer base and continue building its knowledge, passing that knowhow on to the wider marketplace. "Then they won’t be buying a MakerBot and think they can make engines with it - that's what we want to avoid," he explained.

"We want to help people understand the division between low- and high-end and we want more buzz - the correct buzz - in the market place."