A New Landscape

for Mining
Could 3D printing spell profound
change for the mining supply chain?

Introduction

Before printing was discovered,

a century was equal to a
thousand years, Henry David
Thoreau postulated.
Now, nearly 600 years after Gutenberg
invented the printing press, the
technology is fast approaching a point
of evolution that could turn a century
into hours with the latest developments
in three-dimensional printing (3DP).
3DP is the process of making physical
objects from a digital model using
a printer. Although still in the
developmental stages, the technology
has advanced swiftly since its
introduction in the 1980s, and is already
presenting opportunities in new areas,
such as in the custom manufacture of
prosthetics, dental products and other
medical devices that would have been
unimaginable just a few years ago.

Over the next decade, technology

observers predict that the pace of
change will intensify and more
and more applications will be found
as sophistication increases and the
cost of equipment falls, following
the now well-established curve for
technology products.
The technology has the potential to
revolutionize consumer and industrial
markets, increasing the opportunity to
tailor products to individual needs at
leads times measured in hours, not days.
If the technology has even a fraction of
the impact that experts predict, then
it will revolutionize supply chains
changing the point of manufacture,
shrinking transport costs and introducing
potentially limitless product variants.

For mining companies, often operating

in the most remote and hostile
environments and requiring a broad
array of inputs (notably spare parts
required at high frequency), 3DP provides
an opportunity to streamline and optimize
in-bound supply chains. But there are
many practical challenges. How far
has the 3DP technology advanced and
are the ubiquitous predictions ever
likely to be fulfilled in such a complex,
challenging and safety-critical
environment? This paper explains the
3DP concept and its evolution followed
by a discussion of the opportunity of
3DPas it advancesand practical
considerations for mining companies
and their supply chains.

3DP defined
3DP offers a digital approach to manufacturing by building
solid objects on a layer-by-layer basis from a digital model.
3DP is sometimes referred to as additive
manufacturing, rapid prototyping or rapid
manufacturing. The approach is very
different from traditional manufacturing
methods that typically involve subtracting
material and performing multi-step
processing. In contrast, 3DP products
are produced through an additive
process involving the successive layering
of material into its final structure. At
present, there are several 3D printing
technologies, some of them are:
Stereolithography apparatus (SLA)
Uses the process of concentrating a
beam of ultraviolet light focused onto
the surface of a vat filled with liquid
photocurable photopolymer, hardening
the material layer by layer.

Selective laser sintering (SLS)

high powered laser
fuseD powdered
layers

Powdered
material

lowered
powder bed

Fused deposition modeling (FDM)

Extrudes powder that hardens
when leaving the extrusion nozzle
to form layers.1
Selective laser sintering (SLS) Uses
a laser to melt small particle powders
that solidify to form a particular layer,
working similarly as SLA but applying
powdered material instead of liquid
photopolymer.

Figure 1. The 3DP process occurs through an additive, layer-by-layer approach

Source: Accenture
The technologies are different in terms
of material and process, but the principle
is the same in that the 3D printers build
solid objects on a layer-by-layer basis,
as shown in Figure 1. The most mature
methods print hardened plastics, but
even metals and ceramics are relatively
developed. A vast array of other new
materials is being explored for 3DP use,
including carbon fiber, wood, foodstuffs,
and bio materials.

3DP can produce anything from tiny

accessories, clothing and design items,
plastic handles and car dashboards to
custom artificial tooth implants and
fully functioning parts with moving
components. An impressive example is
the production of high-precision, safety
hoop and air intake systems in titanium
alloy materials for the Formula One racing
industry, further increasing confidence
in the performance of the materials
produced by 3D technology.2 Industry
leaders predict in the future it will even
be possible to print multiple materials
simultaneously making composites of
materials possible.

The evolution of 3DP

3DP has advanced steadily as a technology since
it emerged in the 1980s with the continuous
progression of 3D printers for industrial and,
more recently, for domestic use. With the
commercialization of the 3D printers the price
tag has gone down from the six-figure range to a
few thousand dollars today, as shown in Figure 2.
$1,000,000

$800,000

Printer Price (Dollars)

$420,000

$1,00,000

$55,000
$29,900

$10,000

$1,000

$49,900
$18,900
$15,000
$14,630
$5,000
$2,400
$2,000
$1,299
$500

$100
1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Industrial

Domestic

Expon. (Industial)

Expon. (Domestic)

Figure 2. Indicative evolution of three-dimensional printer price

Source: Accenture analysis

3.0%

Motor Vehicles

5.3%

Aerospace

19.5%

6.0%

Industrial/Business Machines

8.0%

Consumer Products/Electonics
12.1%

Medical/Dental
Academic Institutions

15.1%
10.8%
20.3%

Government/Military
Architectual
Other

Figure 3. Industries being served by additive manufacturing and 3D printing

Source: Wohlers Report 2012

The core application and impact of

3DP started within industrial product
development where rapid prototyping and
design visualization have enabled faster
and more cost-effective solutions, which
are well suited to low-volume production.
The automotive and aerospace industries
have therefore been early adopters, where
the driving force is rapid prototyping,
cutting cost and lead times within the
product development space.
3DP has since evolved into greater use
in the manufacturing domain with the
benefits of reduced wastage, minimal
setup times and tooling. Today, the largest
application for 3DP-produced parts is
within the automotive and consumer
goods industries. (See Figure 3.)
With the recent evolution of 3DP and
the emergence of printers that can print
new and even multiple materials at once
producing more advanced and complex
objects of increasingly higher resolution
and larger scale, it is likely other industries
will gradually adopt the new technology.
IT research and advisory company Gartner
suggests that 3DP is currently at the peak
of inflated expectation, anticipating 3DP
to be fully adopted and productive within
the next five to 10 years.3
There will be technical limitations as
to how advanced products and parts
could be produced or even if they
would be economically viable. Emerging
applications such as biotechnology
(e.g. teeth, bone, organ implants, etc.),
however, are offering highly advanced
tailored health care solutions and
are already gaining steady attention
suggesting that the 3DP applicability is
advancing swiftly. Should 3DP technology
succeed in evolving into this capability,
the impact will be significant across
many industries, including mining.
In fact, recent press suggests that in
particular the mining industry is literally
taking 3DP to the next level by looking
to use 3D printers to enable deep-space
asteroid mining.
4

3DP to support mining in space

Newly formed Deep Space Industries (DSI)
announced plans in January 2013 to launch
a fleet of space-based mining exploration
leveraging 3DP technology. Prospecting trips
will begin in 2015, launching spacecraft to
search for space rocks that can be harvested
for precious metals such as platinum and
other resources.
The company will rely on a patent-pending
3DP technology to help manufacture metal
parts in space from pure asteroid that can
then be used in the manufacturing of space
habitats, platforms and satellites.4

3DP at the coal face

While the hype is exciting and the impact
in other industries has been significant, the
characteristics of a mining operation mean that
there are a number of barriers that 3DP must
overcome in order to make a meaningful impact.
First, and most important, product safety
and quality features must be proven.
Second, suppliers, both international
and local, must buy in and have both the
capability and desire to enable production
in situ. Third, the economic case must
be robust: the cost of production at
mine site, including equipment, labor
and raw materials, must be lower than
for shipped goods.
As with all evolving technologies, there
are practical difficulties, also. While a
good proportion of items used in mining
are relatively simple and generic, many
still are precision engineered in order to
be able to withstand significant loads
and challenging environments. Although
production of items made of multiple
materials, or composites, has become
MINING SPEND BY TYPE

technically feasible, 3DP remains relatively

unproven for precision-engineered parts.
Furthermore, many spares required for
key pieces of mining equipment are
proprietary to and supplied by original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and,
as in many sectors, there are likely to
be concerns in ceding control of final
production to customers with potential
implications for equipment warranty. At
the same time, the cost of such parts is
significant and dependency to the OEMs
can become high.
There are practical application limits
within mining given the complex range
and varying nature of inputs required. The
illustrative analysis outlined in Figure 4
estimates the proportion of spend with
third parties for which 3DP could

% OF WHICH May BE DELIVERED BY 3DP

92% OUT-OF-

% OF ALL SPEND
FOR WHICH 3DP
COULD APPLY

SCOPE

PROJECTS
& SERVICES

INDIRECTS

20%

8%

10%
IN-SCOPE

INDIRECTS

15%

5%
86%

24%
41%

PROCESSESSING
& TRANSPORT

OUT-OFSCOPE

MINING
PRODUCTION

POTENTIAL
SPEND IN-SCOPE
LOW

14%

IN-SCOPE

HIGH

MINING PRODUCTION

Figure 4. Conceptual estimate of the proportion of mining spend or inputs for

which 3DP could be applicable
Source: Accenture analysis

apply today. As the diagram shows, the

overall proportion is relatively low at five
percent to 10 percent of spend. This low
proportion is due to the fact that major
expenditure is normally on material inputs
(e.g., structural steel, concrete, process
chemicals, etc.), equipment (trucks,
conveyors, etc.), a variety of services
(e.g., from shaft sinking to contract
mining) and transport. The type of mine
(underground vs. open pit) and type of
alloy or output are also likely to impact
the level of applicability as they demand
different processes and equipment.
However, it is important to recognize that
the analysis tells only a partial story. First,
it provides no visibility of potential usage
by third-party contractors who often
undertake a significant proportion of work
using their own equipment as it is difficult
to estimate this accurately in practice.
Second, it focuses on whole life cost
including capital projects to establish and
expand operations, which therefore skews
the impact away from ongoing operations,
where the impact may be most significant
due to the significant use of spare parts.
Therefore, if 3DP techniques could be
used to produce equipment relating to 15
percent to 20 percent of an operations
ongoing run costs, then its contribution
could be significant.
Nevertheless, if technology continues
to eat away at the barriers in a nottoo-distant future, 3DP could provide
some significant advantages in a mining
environment. With high, fixed production
costs of both equipment and labor any
downtime is extremely costly, especially
at points in the cycle where demand
is high. In many cases, downtime and
production stops are related to equipment
parts failure. This situation can mean
that very high transport or part costs
can be incurred in order to replace parts
at short notice, or that operations hold
excess inventory to guard against the
potential for such a situation, or both,
significantly inflating working capital
and operating costs.
6

The 3DP features and potential

impact on mining operations
3DP has the potential to challenge the concept
of economies of scale, and drive value in an era
of scarcer resources, increased volatility and
higher demand for flexibility and customization.
So how would a mining operation look
with an advanced 3DP capability?
There are a number of features of 3DP
that are relevant to mining companies
and their supply chain and operations:
On-demand and on-site
Custom and replicable
Leaner and greener
These 3DP features could assist in
reshaping mining supply chains and
operations by significantly shrinking
delivery lead times, removing excessive
stock and complexity across the supply
chain, impacting manufacturing,
transportation, and service and
location strategies.

On-demand and on-site

A core feature of 3DP is that it requires
no tooling and no minimum batch size
for ordering or manufacturing. This
feature enables the potential for true
on-demand supply chain management.
The on-demand concept combined with
the mobility of 3DPmaking products
wherever and whenever required
could effectively enable insourcing
manufacturing strategies for equipment
and parts.

For a mine site, where downtime is costly,

the impact of 3DP on spares and service
parts logistics could revolutionize the
concept of parts availability and stockkeeping within the supply chains. At
present, redundancies are built into the
supply chains either by building physical
stock on site, or by having logistic
networks in place to enable parts to be
dispatched in a short time frame and at
high cost, to ensure machines are kept
up and running.
With an advanced 3DP capability
available on site, operations in remote
locations would only need access to a
digital service parts library for production
of a required part where and when
needed. With spare parts stored digitally,
warehousing and inventory costs would
be reduced and the lengthy and expensive
process of transporting parts to remote
sites could be eliminated. As a result,
the high cost associated with delivering
critical parts long distances, many times
by air, could be reduced significantly.

New requirements to source and manage

raw materials would emerge. Rather than
sourcing finished goods, 3DP assumes
availability of the required raw material.
This material would typically be powders
in bulk and thus more cost efficient
to transport. Releasing cash tied up
in finished goods inventory would also
be significant considering the value of
raw materials versus that of complex
finished goods.
The ability to produce on-demand and
on-site would be particularly beneficial
when setting up a new mine in a new
locationwhere it is difficult to predict
all of the restock points if conditions are
different from those usually seen with
different strains on spares. This possibility
is also a potentially advantageous one in
times of observed climate changes and
increased weather volatility impacting the
supply chain. 3DP would provide better
ability to get the products on the ground
should inclement conditions occur.
With the growing adoption of an evolved
3DP across industries, the supply chains
strategies and inventory policies of
mining companies would likely need to
be refreshed to optimize supply chain
efficiency and operational effectiveness.
As a result, stock-keeping could be
further optimized across the supply chain
postponing the need for purchasing
or producing the finished good to the
point at which it is required. Following
the asteroid mining approach, imagine
the opportunities that would open up if
traditional miners were able to become
self-supplied, sourcing required raw
material locally and producing required
material on site.

Custom and replicable

Another key feature 3DP offers is the
possibility to not only customize specific
components, but also the potential to
tailor the entire portfolio of equipment
made available to an operation site for
nearly no additional cost. With supporting
technology it becomes very easy to make
a digital copy of an existing physical
object and replicate the item where
needed. This capability brings advantages
when applied both as responsive repair
and ongoing preventive maintenance, in
particular, in an offshore operation with
a multiple site setup. In particular, the
service strategy of an operation would be
impacted as it brings an opportunity to
centralize certain services across units.
In the future with evolved 3DP
technology, when a particular faulty part
is logged, a central service center could
locate a similar functioning part (either
on site or elsewhere), and using a three
dimensional scanning device, create a
digital replica of the needed part and
send the digital model with required raw
material specification to the location
requiring the part for production on site.
The role of the service function would
change as the diagnostic and design
capability could be further centralized
to serve more sites, whereas the
on-site service function would focus
on identifying, reproducing and
replacing parts.
3DP could enable a custom and yet
flexible production setup, tailoring the
entire portfolio of equipment that is
made available to an operation site to
support different mining conditions
and the specific requirement. A mining
site could have a limited set of physical

products available on site initially with

the possibility to produce required
components or tooling as required
from an existing digital library or
to design required items to suit the
actual conditions.
As 3DP technology develops, there could
even be a point in time where printers are
actually fixed to machinery on site and
print fixes directly onto components.
With the increasing usage of predictive
maintenance this capability would bring
many new advantages. Not only would
it provide a near-immediate custom part
when required, but also offer application
for extending product life spans by
printing continuously onto base parts to
counteract standard wear and tear.

Leaner and greener

3DP also enables a material- and
energy-efficient approach throughout a
products entire life cyclefrom design
to production to in use to end of life
all important stages in which to gain
efficiencies for companies operating in
remote locations.
New design possibilities that would
be prohibitively more expensive or
impossible to produce with traditional
manufacturing setups could be more
achievable through 3DP. With 3DP,
designs can be made lighter, smaller, and
functionally more complex and efficient;
advanced forms can be created even to
the point of including moving parts. With
the evolution of raw material available
for 3DPand the right designit is
likely products can be designed to last
longer and operate more energy or fuel
efficiently supporting a greener approach.

When it comes to the actual production

stage, traditional manufacturing
techniques typically involve subtracting
excessive material from solid objects,
which basically entails waste of raw
materials and energy. 3DP could
potentially optimize material and energy
utilization while only consuming
the raw material required to build
the final product. A mining business
adopting 3DPeffectively insourcing
manufacturing of certain product
categories, equipment and partswould
indirectly support a more sustainable
approach through this rebalanced
supply chain.
As discussed previously, producing
the right material where and when it
is required presents opportunities to
optimize stock levels and transportation
and reduce the environmental impact.
Furthermore, as 3DP technology and
materials develop, with products
coming to their end of their working life
span, faulty and used parts could be
regenerated if they can be decomposed
and transformed back to the materials
they were originally produced from.
This raw material could be used for the
production of new parts, thus enabling
a self-sustainable approach that would
mean a further reduction in material
utilization and stock requirements.

Conclusion
Mining companies face
ongoing challenges to
bring required supply to
the market. 3DP holds
the potential to address
industry-specific
challengesespecially
as the technology
evolves over the next
few years.

Already, 3DP offers unique features

including on-demand and on-site
production capabilities, custom and
replicable solutions, and a leaner
approach throughout the entire
product life cycle that can benefit
mining companies.
Adopting 3DPas it evolves as an
emerging technology over the next few
yearshas the potential of addressing
mining specific challenges and brings
multiple benefits:
Reducing working capital through
lower inventory levels of purchased
material in the form of expensive
finished goods, and building virtual
inventories of material and equipment.
Contributing to reducing the cost of
inputs (and equipment in particular)
through cheaper production of lighter,
custom components that have a
reduced total landed cost.
Assisting in minimizing downtimes
and the associated risk through ondemand and on-site production of
critical spare parts.
Consolidating certain service and
design functions building centralized
and more intelligent capabilities
serving more sites, more efficiently
and more effectively.
Enabling more sustainable practices
through reduction of material and
energy waste during the entire life
cycle of used material and products
from design, manufacturing,
transportation and to end of life.

Many challenges to overcome with

3DP remain, however, to enable the
potential benefits, including raw material
development, speed of production, size
of printing and sophistication of printed
products. Yet, assuming the same pace
and development as seen over the last
several years in the industry and across
other similar technology booms, such as
with personal computers and the Internet,
3DP is likely to advance into producing
ever-refined products at both a larger
scale and in highly complex materials.
Regardless of the maturity of 3DP, it
is here to stay and is likely to change
the way products are distributed and
made available across the supply chain.
When refreshing global operations and
supply chain management strategies,
mining companies should consider the
opportunities and address associated
challenges that 3DP, as a dynamic
disruptive technology, brings.

10

About the authors

About Accenture

References

Andrew Brimacombe is a senior manager

in Accenture Operations Management
Consulting. He has more than 11 years
of sourcing and procurement and supply
chain consulting experience. Andrew
has worked extensively with mining
and other process industry clients
including oil and gas and steel. He has
led a number of global transformation
programs to deliver significant financial
and capability improvements. Based
in London, he can be reached at
andrew.brimacombe@accenture.com.

Accenture is a global management

consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company, with approximately
261,000 people serving clients in
more than 120 countries. Combining
unparalleled experience, comprehensive
capabilities across all industries and
business functions, and extensive
research on the worlds most successful
companies, Accenture collaborates with
clients to help them become highperformance businesses and governments.
The company generated net revenues of
US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended
Aug. 31, 2012. Its home page is www.
accenture.com.

1. Note: Fused Deposition Modeling and

its abbreviation FDM are registered
trademarks of Stratasys Inc.

Henrik Axelsson is a senior manager in

Accenture Management Consultings
Operations group. He specializes in
innovation and product development,
bringing more than a decade of
experience from industry and consulting.
During his career, Henrik has worked
with global clients across industries
helping transform their go-to-market
strategies, supply chain capabilities and
processes through innovation. Based
in London, he can be reached at
henrik.axelsson@accenture.com.

2.  Titanium F1 Roll Hoop proves

concept, 3T RPD Ltd., http://
www.3trpd.co.uk/case-studies/
titanium-f1-roll-hoop-proves-concept.
htm.
3. Gartners 2012 Hype Cycle for
Emerging Technologies Identifies
Tipping Point Technologies That
Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology
Scenarios, Gartner, 16 August 2012,
www.gartner.com.
4. New Asteroid-Mining Venture
Aims to Launch Probes by 2015,
PC Magazine, 22 January 2013,
http://global.factiva.com.

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