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MakerBot Method 3D printer helps Jamco America meet rapid prototyping goals

3D-printed parts

Image provided by MakerBot

Jamco America is a commercial aircraft interiors company based in Everett, Wash., that manufactures seating and cabin furnishings and also modifies and retrofits existing aircraft. Working as a supplier for some of the largest aircraft manufacturers has unique challenges. Tight deadlines and, most notably, the expectations for innovation have never been higher. Jamco America had access to industrial 3D printers, but the printers were located in parent company Jamco’s Tokyo headquarters, and the parts came with up to a one-month lead time. Parts from local service providers took several weeks and cost several hundreds of dollars each.

To save time, the company spent a couple thousand dollars on an entry-level 3D printer. But the printer “did not have the balance between performance and cost,” said John Cornell, manager of product research and development. “It was always breaking down and producing parts that didn't have the quality that met our requirements.”

Cornell and his team of eight engineers set out to buy an industrial 3D printer. “I was originally pushed to look at a high-budget printer, but I convinced management to look at a lower price point, which would allow us to potentially have multiple printers printing in parallel.”

After comparing 15 printers, they landed on the MakerBot Method. “It helped us improve our process to meet our goals of rapid prototyping and many iterations, very quickly,” Cornell explained. The combination of a circulating heated build chamber and PVA water-soluble support material also enables industrial-level dimensional accuracy while printing highly complex geometries.

After a plug-and-play setup, Jamco began 3D printing functional prototypes immediately and has produced a variety of functional prototypes. The team recently began producing a dual latch system for an aircraft privacy door. The cost and time to 3D-print the latch in-house, compared to outsourcing the job, dropped from $350 and 30 days to $14 and one day.

The company is also testing the ergonomics of an aircraft crew step, with rapid prototyping allowing testing and iterating while demonstrating the functional and spatial usability or ergonomics for the part. It also has printed 48-in.-long extrusions, printed in multiple sections and bonded together, that cost much less than outsourcing alternatives.