Suggestions for the Postal Service
The Postal Service should continue to observe the 3D printing market as it further develops, learn from the examples of foreign posts and logistics companies, and examine the potential of 3D printing to the extent allowable under its existing statutory authority. Doing so would help the Postal Service to position itself to meet the emerging 3D printing needs of citizens and businesses. According to observers of the industry, transportation companies have often waited to see what changes new technologies bring, instead of trying to anticipate the change by positioning themselves accordingly. With 3D printing, the opportunities may be far too good for the Postal Service to wait and see before responding.
Identify Models Based on the Experiences of Foreign Posts
Now that a growing number of foreign posts have started offering various 3D printing services, they provide valuable models that the Postal Service could potentially emulate. In addition, the offerings from UPS and major retailers show that 3D printing has broad appeal and applicability. There are a number of opportunities the Postal Service could consider, including but not limited to the following:
It is important to keep in mind that the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) prohibits the Postal Service from offering new non-postal services. Some 3D printing services, including those offered by other posts, may not be permissible under the Postal Service’s current authority. However, the Postal Service could make a case to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) that some services — such as customized packaging created through 3D scanning — are ancillary to its existing offerings. The potential for substantial new annual revenue from increased package shipments of 3D printed goods, as identified in the OIG’s July 2014 paper, speaks to the benefit of the Postal Service establishing a role in the industry.
Serve as a Community Maker Space
As another possibility, the Postal Service could consider using room in its facilities to provide community maker spaces built around 3D printers. Libraries, universities, and other public institutions around the country have already started to experiment with such offerings, sometimes by teaming up with major 3D printing companies. For example, the State University of New York, New Paltz, worked with MakerBot to build an Innovation Center on campus with dozens of 3D printers. Students and staff can use the 3D printers to expand their skills and knowledge in arts, science, engineering, and other areas. Artists and other community members can also enroll in a digital design program that utilizes the center. At the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, community members can access 3D printers as well as sewing machines, laser engravers, cameras, audiovisual equipment, and other tools to support their creative activities.
The Postal Service has a presence in every community across the United States. In addition, it has more than 60 million square feet of excess space nationwide, much of which is in mail processing centers. Some estimates find that effective 3D printing maker spaces can be set up for less than $10,000.
Understand the Shipping Needs of 3D Printing Companies
When a consumer orders a 3D printed product, it can sometimes take weeks before it arrives on their doorstep. This often depends on the type of material used for printing. The total time can be even longer if there are failed prints. It may be worthwhile for the Postal Service to reach out to 3D printing companies to learn more about their shipping needs and to identify potential solutions that could help minimize the time it takes to get products in consumers’ hands. For example, in a 2014 white paper, we suggested that 3D printing facilities located at or near shipping nodes like postal facilities could help reduce shipping time.
Consider Offering Postal-Themed 3D Printed Goods or Designs
The Postal Service could look into whether it can sell 3D printed goods or designs based on postal artifacts or history. It has a long and rich archive of images and memorabilia that it could draw upon for this purpose. For example, there may be antique stamp designs that would make interesting 3D printed pieces, similar to the 3D printed Queen’s Head Stamp sold by Royal Mail. If the Postal Service wanted to offer postal-themed 3D printed items it would need to determine whether it holds the copyright for the original work in question.
Conclusion
3D printing technology promises to shake up the manufacturing and logistics industries, shifting production closer to consumption and potentially revamping vast parts of the global supply chain. These changes will make fast, on-demand service and last-mile delivery more and more important in coming years. Meeting these growing demands represents a major opportunity in delivery and logistics. The Postal Service could play an important role in the future of 3D printing, given the complementary nature of its nationally distributed processing facilities and last-mile delivery network, and the localized nature of 3D printed manufacturing.
Logistics companies and foreign posts are actively partnering with 3D printing companies as a way to meet new customer needs while positioning their organizations to be beneficiaries of a 3D printing revolution. Others are experimenting with 3D printing services tailored for business clients with clear shipping or logistics needs. It makes sense for the Postal Service to consider similar initiatives. As the Postal Service looks to the future, anticipating the 3D printing needs of citizens and businesses will be critical, especially as it pertains to the new logistics needs that the technology is creating. 3D printing technology will soon fundamentally change the logistics industry, and this is the right time for the Postal Service to start associating itself with 3D printing in the minds of the public.
Many federal agencies have benefited from the use of 3D printing. In particular, the Department of Defense has shown great interest in the technology, deploying 3D printers across its service branches. The U.S. Navy is currently working on around 3D printing projects hosted at dozens of its sites. It also uses a 3D printer onboard at least one ship, the U.S.S. Essex, to print various small items it needs, from oil tank caps to organizational tools. Defense manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and General Electric are working to improve the ability of 3D printing to create parts suitable for the military to use in weapons, ships, and vehicles.
Defense manufacturers like these, other high-tech manufacturers, universities, and various companies with financial interest in 3D printing, including UPS, have established a nonprofit organization called the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM). The organization’s goal is to develop and promote advanced and cost-effective manufacturing tools for defense suppliers, including 3D printing. NCDMM also manages America Makes, a public-private partnership of federal agencies, manufacturing companies, and universities similarly devoted to developing and accelerating the use of 3D printing across government and the manufacturing sector.69 Federal agencies’ work on 3D printing through partnerships like these demonstrates strong belief that the technology holds great promise for advanced manufacturing and for helping to meet agencies’ supply needs.
In addition, NASA recognizes the potential of 3D printing to decrease the cost and risk of meeting its mission supply needs. Its work with 3D printing is still in the early stages, but continued research and experience with 3D printing will allow NASA to give its astronauts more autonomy and flexibility on their missions. NASA has deployed a 3D printer on the International Space Station, where it has already demonstrated that astronauts can use 3D printing in microgravity conditions to build small tools and parts in ABS plastic. Once NASA has determined that these goods are suitable and safe for astronauts to use on missions in space, 3D printers will be a ready source of these tools and parts, reducing the high costs of sending spares on missions to space. Long-term missions will benefit even more from in-space manufacturing, which could eventually construct everything from small tools to deep space habitats. NASA and America Makes are currently holding a competition to design and build a 3D printed habitat for deep space exploration, including a journey to Mars.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a member organization of America Makes, has demonstrated the ability to create large objects in advanced materials with 3D printing. Its Big Area Additive Manufacturing Machine (BAAM) has the ability to print in carbon fiber-reinforced ABS, an advanced material suitable for aerodynamic vehicle frames. The laboratory demonstrated the capability by creating a replica Shelby Cobra automobile for display at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. Researchers with the lab constructed the vehicle’s frame and body with the BAAM, and have found that the carbon fiber-reinforced ABS exhibits strength and stiffness comparable to or better than the steel or aluminum often used for the frames and bodies of automobiles. According to DOE, this capability makes the BAAM suitable for many research applications for clean energy manufacturing, not just for automobiles.
Additionally, the Critical Materials Institute at DOE’s Ames Laboratory is using advanced laser-based 3D printing technology to develop new metal alloys to replace rare-earth elements and other materials needed in critical technologies, including clean energy systems. The institute’s 3D printer, which uses the heat of a laser to fuse metal powders, will allow its researchers to produce a large number of different metal alloys far more quickly than they could with traditional casting methods. In a demonstration, researchers used the printer to produce a small rod made out of stainless steel in just 20 seconds. The speed at which the 3D printer can generate a library of alloys for testing makes it a powerful tool for the Critical Materials Institute as it continues its work on energy innovation.
The ability of 3D printing to decentralize production of objects manufactured with high levels of precise detail has applications for more public facing government services as well. In 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Health and Human Services launched the NIH 3D Print Exchange, a program that provides biomedical models formatted for 3D printers and offers tools for users to create and share such models. Prior to the launch of this program, few scientifically accurate or medically applicable 3D-printable models were available, as researchers in the field lacked the ability and tools to generate them. The program provides these tools, and now hosts over 5,000 3D-printable files of biomedical models on the first government-sponsored website devoted to 3D printing. As 3D printers become increasingly accessible and affordable, this free, readily available library of biomedical models will help facilitate research, medical practice, and education. Additionally, in January 2015, the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made 3D technologies, including 3D printing, the subject of its annual Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Festival, demonstrating that NIH sees great potential to improve the field of medicine through the increased use of the technology.
Centralized 3D Printing: Businesses Sell Finished 3D Printed Goods to Consumers
In the first scenario, consumers buy finished 3D printed goods from retailers, specialized businesses, or services bureaus. Those companies could end up increasingly competing on speed as the 3D printing market grows larger, leading some of them to locate their printing facilities at or near shipping nodes. Doing so would allow them to get their products into the delivery stream more quickly. The Postal Service could act as a logistics partner for companies located near postal facilities, in a sense becoming a hub for 3D printing. Under this scenario, the Postal Service’s commercial package revenue could increase by as much as $646 million per year.
The Postal Service’s benefit from 3D printing and its attractiveness as a logistics partner for 3D printing companies would come from the strength of its network. In this scenario, any weakening of the Postal Service’s network — through reductions in important features like service frequency, number of delivery points, tracking and tracing services, or pick-up options — could result in lower additional new revenue from package shipments.
In addition, the Postal Service has more than 60 million square feet of excess space nationwide, much of which is in mail processing centers. These are industrial facilities that could accommodate the electrical power and ventilation needs of large 3D printers. The Postal Service could lease some of this space directly to 3D printing businesses, making it even easier for them to ship products quickly.
Decentralized 3D Printing: People Print Some Goods at Home Instead of Buying Them
The second scenario involves people using in-home or desktop 3D printers to print out a variety of items. Much of the buzz around 3D printing is based on this notion — that people will one day use affordable, high quality in-home printers to make many, if not most, of the items they now purchase from retailers. This is highly unlikely. If in-home 3D printers do manage to become ubiquitous, they would probably only be used for relatively few items. However, if people do end up using in-home 3D printers to create many things and not just a small handful of items, the result could be massive disruption to existing retail supply chains. It could lead to big cuts in brick-and-mortar and e-commerce sales, and a corresponding drop in the number of commercial packages shipped.
Even though products under this second scenario would be printed at home, those in-home printers would need a regular stream of 3D printing materials. After all, people could not print things at home without printing materials on hand. In addition, if people are printing many different types of items, they are going to need to stock a variety of printing materials. This all adds up to a significant increase in package shipments. Under this scenario, the Postal Service could see an increase in annual commercial package revenue as high as $1.1 billion if people 3D print many things at home.
Although there would be a drop in the number of finished goods being shipped by the Postal Service, this drop would likely be small because most household items are currently purchased at brick-and-mortar retail stores. In other words, shipments of printing materials would replace brick-and-mortar purchases that were not shipped through the Postal Service to begin with. The new shipments of 3D printing materials could more than make up for any of this small decrease. However, it is worth repeating that this scenario is not only unlikely, but also highly uncertain.
The Postal Service Could Play an Important Role in 3D Printing
The 2014 white paper included several suggestions for the Postal Service to consider if it seeks to play a role in the 3D printing industry. For example, as the Postal Service continues to consolidate its processing network, it could guard against any changes that would lessen the value of its delivery network. The Postal Service could also establish a platform for 3D printing that uses its national retail network and last-mile delivery capabilities, potentially by partnering with companies that specialize in 3D printing. Designs sent to the platform could be 3D printed and then shipped via same-day or next-day delivery. Customers could also order designs to be printed from an online marketplace and then delivered or held for pickup at a Post Office. Other ideas proposed in the 2014 white paper include ways that the Postal Service could use 3D printing to improve internal operations, and the use of 3D printing to create customized packing materials for individual items that are oddly shaped or otherwise unsuited for ready-made boxes and packing supplies.
(Link: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2015/RARC-WP-16-001.pdf)