The Problem

The R&D center ran on a single aging industrial 3D printer which was slow, expensive, and a single point of failure. If it went down, prototyping could stall for weeks. Many have felt the inconvenience, few have raised complaints, yet nothing formal pushed for improvement. Two coworkers had tried to get desktop printers approved before me, one was satisfied with the industrial printer, yet the other started a proposal, hit pushback on justification, and handed the project to me when I asked. They weren’t told no, they just didn’t want it enough to finish.

The Why & How

I talked to people who used the 3D printer, over 50% of jobs didn’t require the capabilities the industrial printer offered as desktop printers can handle jobs faster and cheaper. The industrial printer cost $56K over 24 months in maintenance and materials alone. Two Bambu Lab units ran $4,500 total. With the shift of over 50% of volume over to the desktop printers, the industrial runs less, uses less expensive filament, and needs less maintenance. That’s $15-$20K in annual savings, which also dissolves the bottleneck and increases prototyping capability.

I built a presentation deck, spoke to my manager and site leader first, got a green light, then requested a live call with the exec directly instead of forwarding the slides. His last question: “why do you want it?” I told him I wanted to prototype parts myself and did not want to burn expensive filament while waiting in line. I gathered evidence for the case myself and found cost reasons nobody has looked for. He approved it on the spot.

The Output

Both printers are up and running. 12 hours of work across 2-3 weeks through discovery, analysis, presentation deck, approvals up the chain, and setup. Estimated $20K in annual savings. Faster prototyping with a lack of bottleneck. The printers were available the whole time. The justification just needed to be revealed.