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Today, many OEMs are choosing to subcontract the manufacturing of their AM products to avoid high CapEx expenditures and expedite project timelines. Yet, the reality is that subcontracting involves navigating multiple layers of risk. To succeed, your team must be able to identify and mitigate blind spots on both sides of the contract: within your own company and on the subcontractor’s manufacturing floor.

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The Internal Blind Spot: Design and Verification Errors
The first hiccup happens long before a purchase order is ever signed. If your internal engineering and design teams do not have a deep process knowledge for Electron Beam or Laser PBF, they are drafting in the dark. Some common issues include:

• Forgetting to Design for the Full Workflow: Designing complex internal cooling channels that are impossible for a subcontractor to de-powder or inspect.

• Incompatible Tolerances: Requesting 100% "machined-level" tolerances on a final additive part, is not only over-kill but leads to longer lead times and massive vendor surcharges.

• The Verification Gap: Not knowing what acceptance test data to require in the End Item Data Package. If your team only asks for a "Dimensional Report" but fails to ask for the final chemistry or mechanical acceptance-test data, you are missing critical checks.

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The Subcontrator Blind Spot: Process Drift and Hidden Variables
Even the best Tier-1 subcontractors have blind spots. Variables shift, and if you aren't auditing them, those shifts become your flight-safety risks.

• Feedstock Lifetime: The manufacturer is likely reusing powder. How is this procedure controlled and what data do they have to support those practices? 

• The "Black Box" of Post-Processing: Many manufacturers outsource the HIP (Hot Isostatic Pressing) or heat treatment. If the manufacturer doesn't have a "Fixed Process" for their sub-tier vendors, your part’s operational life is a guessing game.

• Lack of Process Transparency: Does the manufacturer have a "Gold Standard" benchmark? If they don't have an internal standardized baseline for their machines and you don’t do your own qualification, then there’s no easy way to know if your 40th part is identical to your 1st.

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Procurement and Management Blind Spot: Unrealistic expectation for the prep, print, and post processes
Many procurement and management teams fall into the trap of treating 3D-printed parts as business-as-usual. This is understandable because we don’t know what we don’t know until we know it. But with practically every major step in the workflow being different in this manufacturing process, it’s anything but business-as-usual: from how to qualify the system, how to think about design, different post processing requirements, and a robust verification methodology. 

• It’s Not CNC: 3D Printing has different tolerances, heat treatment, and post processing needs than CNC. This creates different cost and time drivers which are straightforward how to account for, once you know that they are there. But the machine-to-machine variability is greater than what would be expected with traditional technologies, like a mill.

• Different Design Rules: Additive manufacturing opens several doors on design flexibility but design freedom is not free. It’s worth the time to learn the differences as these can enhance a product’s technical capabilities and business case. Additive is not a magic solution, it’s a tool in the toolbox. 

• Different Prep and Post Processing Steps: In powder bed fusion (PBF), you can’t just push a button and out pops a fully ready-to-use part. Cleaning a machined part is more straightforward than cleaning a printed part, where you have depowering, channel clearing, and cleaning of machined surfaces. Same word, different amounts of work. Understanding the strengths and limitations of each manufacturing step is necessary to realize a final product.

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The Hummingbird Solution: Closing the Gaps
We don’t know what we don’t know until we know it. Whether the error happens at your desk or at the subcontractor, it is the same project on the line. We can provide specialized training to manage multi-faceted risks:

1. 3D in 3Days™ or Pick 4 Training™: Select the training structure most critical to your business for one flat-fee.

2. Third-party Auditing: Hummingbird Additive can audit prospective suppliers and provide a Gap Analysis and key recommendations to support your technical and business goals.

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Let’s illuminate the blind spots before they come to light on the production floor. 
Book a discovery call today!

 

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