The MTC offers a flexible solution to 3D printing's post-processing problem

Additive manufacturing’s so-called “dirty little secret” was laid bare at an event at The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry last month as the results of the two-year FlexiFinish project were unveiled.
Busting the well-worn myth that 3D printing is a case of; send file, click print and voila (surely, we can stop pre-fixing presentations with statements like this by now?), the stats show that current post-processing methods count for a chunky 30% of the manufacturing process and in some cases, that figure can be as high as 60%. It’s a significant hurdle which can often make AM a non-competitive technology. To tackle the problem, a consortium of partners across robotics, inspection, and engineering, with funding from Innovate UK, have developed a solution which aims to reduce post-processing costs and time and increase repeatability.