評論
打印
Science and technology
科學技術
3D printing
3D打印
A new brick in the Great Wall
構筑長城的新磚石
Additive manufacturing is growing apace in China
中國的疊層制造正在飛速發展
ALTHOUGH it is the weekend, a small factory in the Haidian district of Beijing is hard at work.
雖然是周末，北京海淀區的一座小型工廠還在努力地運轉著。
Eight machines, the biggest the size of a delivery van, are busy making things.
廠里的八臺機器正在忙碌地制造產品，最大的機器有廂式貨車大小。
Yet the factory, owned by Beijing Longyuan Automated Fabrication System, appears almost deserted.
然而這家隸屬于北京隆源自動成型系統有限公司的工廠看上去就像廢棄了一樣。
This is because it is using additive-manufacturing machines, popularly known as three-dimensional printers, which run unattended day and night, seven days a week.
這是因為工廠使用的是疊層制造設備，即廣為人知的三維打印機，可以一周七天，不分晝夜的無人化運轉。
The printers require an occasional visit from a supervisor to top them up with the powdered materials they use as their inks, or to remove a completed item, but apart from that they can be left on their own.
這些打印機需要管理員不定期的來為其加滿粉末狀原料，作為它們的墨水，或者取走完成的物品，但除此之外，這些打印機可以自行運轉。
They build up the objects they are making one layer at a time, as the ink is sintered into place with a laser in a way that creates little waste and can make shapes impossible to achieve using the traditional subtractive technology of lathes, milling machines and cutting tools.
它們一次一層的逐步構造物品，用激光以一種不會產生什么廢料的方式將墨水在適當位置燒結，可以做出采用傳統削減技術的車床、銑床、刀具不可能做出的形狀。
Though it is not yet ready for use in mass production, 3D printing is excellent for making prototypes, customised jobs and short production runs, for there is no need to retool each time the specification changes.
雖然3D打印目前不能用于大批量生產，但3D打印非常適用于制造原型件，定制加工及小批量生產，因為改變規格時不需要每次都更換刀具，
All that need be done is to alter the software that controls the print heads.
需要的只是更改控制打印頭的軟件而已。
Western countries led the development of 3D printing, and the technique has been praised by Barack Obama as a way to revive America's manufacturing industries.
西方國家引領了3D打印的發展，該技術還被巴拉克·奧巴馬譽為復興美國制造業的一種途徑。
It may yet do so.
3D打印或許能不負所望。
But the extent to which that revival will be brought about by the return to America of production which has migrated to countries like China is harder to predict—for China has plans of its own.
讓以前轉移到像中國這樣的國家生產的產品回到美國生產會帶來復興，但復興的程度更難預料——因為中國也有自己的計劃。
Keep your powder dry
做好一切準備
At the moment AFS is in the prototyping business.
目前AFS從事的是原型設計業務，
Its customers are mainly aerospace firms and vehicle-makers that need experimental designs turned into metal quickly.
其客戶大多是需要將實驗設計快速轉化為金屬實樣的航空公司及汽車制造商。
The powders in its machines' hoppers are plastics, waxes and foundry sand.
其設備料斗中的粉末是塑料，蠟及鑄造用砂。
The results are sent off to foundries, where they are used to make moulds for the sand-casting of metal objects.
完成品送到鑄造廠，用來制作金屬件砂模鑄造用的模具。
According to William Zeng, AFS's deputy general manager, all the parts needed to make a prototype car engine can be printed and cast in this way in under two weeks.
據AFS的副總經理William Zeng稱，制作一個汽車引擎原型所需的全部零件均可以這種方式打印并鑄造，用時不到兩周，
A conventional machine shop would need several months to do that—not least because many of the components would have to be made by hand.
而傳統的機工車間需要數月時間才能做到——主要是因為許多組件需要手工制作。
AFS also has a second line of business. It sells the laser-sintering printers it makes to others, for this is a rapidly growing industry.
AFS還有一塊副營業務，即將其制造的激光燒結打印機出售給其它公司，因為這是一個飛速增長的行業。
And some of its machines, which cost up to 1.5m yuan, can do more than just sinter plastics, wax and sand; they can sinter metals directly.
其某些設備的售價高達150萬元人民幣（約合25萬美元），不只可以燒結塑料，蠟和砂子，還可以直接燒結金屬。
Indeed, one of the country's largest 3D printers does just this.
實際上，中國最大的3D打印機也有此功能。
It is 12 metres long and it belongs to the National Laboratory for Aeronautics and Astronautics at Beihang University.
該設備長12米，擁有者是北京航空航天大學的航空航天國家實驗室。
Wang Huaming, the laboratory's chief scientist, told a digital-manufacturing seminar organised recently by the Laboratory of High Performance Computing, a government research institute, that this behemoth is being employed to make large and complex parts for China's commercial-aircraft programme, which plans to build planes to rival those turned out by Airbus and Boeing.
該實驗室的首席科學家王華明最近在一次由高性能計算實驗室組織的數字制造研討會上說，這個大家伙是為中國的商用飛機項目制造大型復雜部件的，該項目計劃制造出可以與空客和波音制造的飛機匹敵的飛機。
These parts include titanium fuselage frames and high-strength steel landing-gear—objects that require the metal they are made from to be free of flaws which might cause them to fail.
這些部件包括鈦機身骨架及高強鋼起落架，制造這些部件所用的金屬要求沒有任何瑕疵，否則會導致部件無法使用。
Printing such things, rather than making them from precast metal, will be a technical tour de force, and Dr Wang's team is therefore working on the tricky problem of controlling the recrystallisation of metals after they have been melted by the laser.
打印這些部件，而不用預制金屬制作，將會是一項技術絕活，因此王博士的團隊正在致力解決的棘手問題是激光將金屬熔化后對金屬重結晶的控制。
Making planes is about as high-tech as mechanical engineering gets.
制造飛機算是機械工程中的高科技。
But 3D printing in China is also busy at the other end of the market: extruding filaments of molten plastic to build up objects such as toys, mobile-phone cases and car fittings.
但是3D打印在中國還廣泛應用于其他市場：擠出熔融塑料的細絲來逐步構造出如玩具，手機殼及汽車配件等物品。
One of the biggest firms in this field is Tiertime, which operates from Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing.
位于北京市郊懷柔區的太爾時代是該領域最大的公司之一。
Tiertime makes a range of 3D printers that produce objects from polymeric alloys of acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene.
太爾時代生產一系列3D打印機，可以用丙烯腈，丁二烯和苯乙烯的聚合物合金制作物品。
Tiertime's printers are also often used in the prototyping business, but unlike those of AFS they sit in designers' offices rather than on factory floors.
太爾時代的打印機也常用于原型設計業務，但與AFS的設備不同，太爾時代的設備是置于設計師的辦公室，而非工廠的車間里。
Some are small enough to sit on a desk.
有的設備小到可以放在桌子上。
They allow people to print their ideas directly, rather than having to.
這讓人們可以直接將自己的創意打印出來，而不用將創意發出去讓別人制作。
The company also makes even smaller printers, called UP, which sell for less than 6,000 yuan.
太爾時代甚至還可以制造更小的打印機，叫做UP，售價不到6000元人民幣。
Personal printers like these are helping to create a Chinese version of the maker movement—a mixture of hobbyists and craft producers who, finding that 3D-printing technology greatly lowers the cost of going into production, are creating small manufacturing businesses.
類似UP的個人打印機正在促進中國版創客運動的形成，即一批發現3D打印技術極大的降低了投產成本的業余愛好者及工藝品制造者正在紛紛建立小型制造企業。
The maker movement began in America, but it is taking off in China too.
創客運動始于美國，但在中國的創客運動也在迅速發展。
Maker fairs are now being held in some of the big cities. Officials seem happy to encourage this, and some talk of introducing 3D printers into schools, to spark pupils' interest in careers in engineering.
某些大城市現在正在舉辦創客展會。官方似乎樂于支持創客運動，某些官員談及將3D打印機引入學校，激發學生從事工程職業的興趣。
3D printing is still a long way from replacing mass manufacturing. But in China, as in America and Europe, the technology is changing the way products are developed and made.
3D打印要想取代大批量生產還有很長一段路要走。但在中國，與在美國和歐洲一樣，該技術正在改變開發和制造產品的方式。
And by lowering the cost of entry, 3D printing could herald yet another new generation of Chinese manufacturing entrepreneurs.
通過降低成本門檻，3D打印或許能創造出新一代的中國制造業企業家。
