If you have ever worked with 3D printing, you already know that additive manufacturing has a lot to offer in many industries.
One of the world’s largest and most prominent industries is oil and gas. Innovative companies like Immensa have been making waves in the industry with new ideas centered on additive manufacturing. If the future holds exciting technological advances, this will surely be one of them.
How is additive manufacturing disrupting the oil and gas industry?
Immensa, as an industry leader, is pushing the concept of manufacturing as a service. The digital nature of additive manufacturing allows Immensa to provide professional resources for analysis and design. Once designs are completed, they can be downloaded and used with 3D printers on location.
This service model allows Immensa to streamline precise design while customers carry out the physical process of manufacturing parts via their 3D printers.
It’s an exciting new way to innovate within a well-established industry, making additive manufacturing more accessible, bringing several benefits to the industry.
For starters, 3D-printed parts reduce lead time significantly, especially for any critical parts in a system. From tiny gears to significant components, the freedom that comes with 3D printing allows producers in the industry to replace parts on demand.
This allows for reduced inventory, which is good for cash flow and space management. Despite the reduced inventory, part replacements can happen faster than traditional manufacturing methods. On top of that, every replacement comes with the opportunity for refinement in the design. A part with subtle imperfections can be improved through iterative design, and additive manufacturing can consistently offer performance improvements with each printed part.
Benefits of Additive Manufacturing
These benefits have pushed for more additive manufacturing across the oil and gas industry. As a result, the Joint Innovation Program (JIP) is a major undertaking by all major oil and gas players. Including Immensa as a partner, the organization aims to spread additive manufacturing across the industry while providing ever-better ways to implement it and reap benefits.
World-Wide Operations
To put into perspective just how major this operation is, it includes members such as Shell, Equinor, BP, Total, Rolls Royce Marine, TechnipFMC, Kongsberg, and Vallourec. The group represents one of the largest endeavors to innovate the oil and gas industry in recent history, and it is all focused on additive manufacturing applications.
Since the organization was formed, it has laid out guidelines for additive manufacturing and enabled operations across the planet to make use of 3D printing in almost countless applications. Onsite part production has redefined efficiency and reliability within the industry, helping from extraction to refinement and enabling major players to keep up with one of the most volatile moments in the history of oil and gas.
With professionally designed, tailor-made parts for some of the most precise components in machinery and equipment, extractors, shippers, and refiners are constantly making as many small improvements as possible. The large-scale result is an industry that can adapt to world-shaking events without creating gaps in the world’s most complicated and essential supply chain.
