Industry Highlight: Transforming Oil & Gas Manufacturing

Alberta's thriving Oil & Gas manufacturing industry has been recently transformed thanks to innovation in 3D printing and additive manufacturing.  Recent supply chains challenges as a result of Covid-19 have made it difficult for component manufacturers to keep up with the high demand of oil and gas parts. To ease the burden on the supply chain, many oil & gas companies turned to 3D printing to reduce turnaround time on spare parts, fittings, castings, forgings and a number of other critical oil & gas components.  Companies like General Electric, Chevron, Shell and a number of other industry leaders have recently entered into widespread production of 3D-printed components. These innovations have enabled 3D printing to build cheaper spare parts, reduce warehousing and enable production of more efficient components capable of being used in even the harshest environments.

3D printed parts can be more easily replaced, increasing the availability of spare parts in case of emergencies allowing companies to keep digital inventories rather than physical stock thereby reducing inventory carrying costs. Lead times are also dramatically reduces as there is no tooling or setup costs required. This allows highly complex and difficult to machine parts to be 3D printed instead with no minimum part requirements. Functional oil & gas parts can be turned around much quicker and affordably in a wide range of lightweight chemical resistant thermoplastics, composites and metals. As oil & gas manufacturing moves towards increasing efficiency and accelerating their supply chains, 3D printing has proven itself to be an integral solution.

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