Does something break at home? We think about it # 3D printer to print the new piece, and voila, that's it. It is not science fiction, but a reality very close to us.
Groupe Seb, French giant specialized in small household appliances (in Italy it sells Rowenta, Moulinex, Krups and Tefal), is experimenting in France with a new system of "molding" of spare parts, using 3D printers.
Today it works like this, as far as i Spares: the company has a warehouse that contains 5,7 million pieces of over 40 thousand products. But in doing so, the company must somehow "guess" how many pieces to produce, programming the number to keep in stock after a product has left the catalog, to respond to any requests.
Therefore, now we are thinking of a different and more flexible (and above all cheaper) model. Explains the vice president of the group, Alain Pautrot, “now we have two in operation (printers, ed). At the moment only i plastic spare parts, we are also testing metal parts ".
If the test in France gives good results, Seb will expand to other countries. The investment includes the development of an automatic system that manages the requests and schedules the printing of the requested pieces. All automatic, all cheaper.
