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The Beauty of 3D Printing at Whitman Laboratories
Company Feature, Nov 6, 2018
The Estée Lauder Companies’ (ELC) ongoing commitment to invent the future of beauty is on display at the UK-based Whitman manufacturing facility, which produces many of ELC’s prestige skin care products. There engineers are using cutting-edge 3D printing technology to modernize manufacturing processes and prototyping.
An example of how 3D printing assists with the creation of a Jo Malone London bottle. The color red has been chosen so that 3D printed parts are easily identified and engineers know the part is available on-demand.
This inventive equipment is enabling Whitman employees to overcome engineering challenges and prototype new production methods by designing and printing new parts, jigs and fixtures in-house, in as little as a few hours and at a fraction of the cost of producing the parts externally.
An example of how ELC is using this incredible technology is on Jo Malone London’s 30 ml fragrance bottles. New 3D printed jigs are used as a quality assurance tool for label alignment of the bottles, allowing for time and cost savings. 3D printed parts are also used in the high-speed assembly of Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair Recovery Complex to ensure the accurate centering of the glass pipettes before insertion into the bottle.
In addition to reducing time and cost, the additive manufacturing technology also minimizes waste. The parts are ‘built’ layer by layer instead of being ‘machined out’ of larger blocks of material, as in the traditional method of subtractive manufacturing, and use biodegradable PLA (polylactic acid).
Chris Lee, Process Engineer at ELC’s Whitman Plant said, “Although our primary reason for adopting the new 3D printing technology was to keep up with the latest innovation in manufacturing, 3D printing is also helping us to quickly and more effectively problem-solve many more challenges than we ever could have imagined.”
He continued, “Thanks to the use of the technology, it’s now possible to design and test new machine parts in hours instead of weeks or months, and for as little as $1.31, or £1.00, per part rather than thousands of pounds.” Moving forward, ELC’s Whitman team plans to continue this success with the introduction of a 3D printing ‘vending machine,’ which will include an LCD touch-screen to enable individual engineers on the production line to view, select and print new parts from a digital catalog of options.
Increasingly the team of engineers at Whitman are building new design software skills in-house. In addition, awareness sessions are planned at ELC’s manufacturing facilities in Switzerland and Belgium to expand this evolutionary way of working.
3D printing is just one example of how ELC is embedding modern innovation along its value chain by adopting new technology in company-owned manufacturing, packaging, distribution and retail facilities around the world.
Watch: The 3D Printer at Work
ELC's 3D printer creates a Jo Malone London 30 ml bottle
