Print-a-gadget

3D printing is increasingly being adopted by companies, Apple being the latest

- SUGANDHA MUKHERJEE

MANUFACTURING REVOLUTIONS RARELY blaze into view. They often emerge as quiet upgrades inside factories, invisible to the people buying the products. Apple's decision to 3D-print every titanium case for its new Watch Ultra 3 and titanium Watch Series 11 fits that pattern.At first glance, it is classic Apple theatre — engineering rendered with a sense of inevitability. The company is printing cases using 100% recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder.

“It wasn’t just an idea... it was an idea that wanted to become a reality,” says Kate Bergeron, vice-president of product design. Additive manufacturing has long excelled at prototypes, integrating it into one of the world's most scrutinised, high-volume supply chains marks a new threshold.

Yet Apple's move is not a lone outlier. Across consumer electronics, the quiet adoption of 3D printing has been gathering pace. Lenovo, for instance, has used 3D-printed metal brackets and hinge components in certain ThinkPad models. HP prints more than a hundred internal components for its own printers and PCs using its multi jet fusion technology.