Appliance maker urges plastics industry to move faster on 3-D printing

Istanbul — One of Europe's largest makers of home appliances, Arçelik A.Ş., is urging the plastics industry to step up the pace in adopting 3-D printing technologies, as a way to “open doors” in developing new products and overcome limits with existing plastic technologies.

Speaking at a Dec. 2 conference ahead of the PlastEurasia trade fair in Istanbul, a senior executive in the company's manufacturing technology unit said it expects the technology to improve and be widely-used in a decade.

Istanbul-based Arçelik, which is Europe's second-largest maker of home appliances, is a large plastics molder in its own right, with 1,200 molding machines, 25,000 employees and 14 factories around the world.

But the company also buys about 40 percent of its plastic parts from other companies, and Metin Bilgili, the technical leader of Arçelik's manufacturing technologies directorate, told the conference that Arçelik sees potential for major advantages in its production processes with additive manufacturing.

“If we can't manufacture something with existing technology, 3-D printing will up doors for us,” he told an audience of more than 200 at the Turkish Plastics Industry Congress. “The plastic industry needs 3-D printing technology.”

Part of problem with existing plastics technologies is technical, he said: for example, there are limits in mold design that prevent the company from developing products as it would like.

“With the existing technology there is a barrier in front of the design of the plastic parts,” he said in a separate interview, noting requirements for inserts in molds that limit Arcelik's product design.

As well, Bilgili said the company would like to take steps out of the production process by eliminating or cutting back on mold manufacturing.

“You have to make the mold and you have to try the mold and you have to measure the parts, and then you have to bring the mold from the outside and put it in the factory,” he said. “With this 3-D machine it is much easier. You have this one machine and you can solve everything with that.”

He said the Arçelik buys 1,500 molds a year.

He told the conference that while 3-D printing remains too slow today for much of a role in commercial production, he expects that to change quickly, within 10 years.

“I have a really big hope about that,” he said, noting that he's visited universities and companies developing additive manufacturing technology. ”They are working on it, but still [the machines] are a little slow. They have to make it faster.”

Bilgili said he's familiar with the plastics industry's existing efforts in additive manufacturing, including the Freeformer developed by German injection press maker Arburg GmbH + Co. KG. But he said it's also not fast enough for Arçelik's commercial use now.

“I have been to the Arburg factory and I have seen the working conditions with it,” he said. “But the working conditions are still very slow.”

He also suggested that additive manufacturing could help the company better handle the increasingly fast product development cycles in consumer goods industries.

Arçelik is expanding globally. In January, it announced a $100 million investment in a factory in Thailand, its 15th manufacturing facility.

The company, with 2014 sales of 12.5 billion Turkish lira ($5.3 billion at 2014 year-end exchange rates) has eight factories in Turkey, along with production plants in China, Romania, Russia and South Africa. It said it expects the Thai facility to be operating by the end of the year.

Turkey's PlastEurasia Fair runs from Dec. 3-6 in Istanbul.