In the world of additive manufacturing, quality is more than a benchmark—it’s the foundation for success.
By his own admission, Mark Dickin (Head of Additive Manufacturing) states: “At Ricoh 3D, commitment to quality drives every stage of our end-to-end (E2E) processes, ensuring that our customers and partners receive reliable, high-performance solutions that meet their needs.”
The Importance of Quality in Additive Manufacturing
Achieving quality in additive manufacturing is a complex yet essential goal. From design and prototyping to final production, every step must be precise to ensure consistency, durability, and functionality. Without rigorous standards, there’s a risk of producing parts that fall short of expectations, impacting performance, cost and safety.
At Ricoh 3D, we understand that quality isn’t just about meeting industry standards… It’s about exceeding them. Our holistic approach integrates robust processes, cutting-edge technology, and passionate professionals to ensure excellence at every stage of the journey.
Why choose Ricoh 3D?
When you work with Ricoh 3D, you benefit from decades of RICOH’s global manufacturing and innovation heritage, combined with the knowledge of ever-evolving industries, workspaces and applications…
Here’s how our quality model sets us apart:
1. Defined Quality Standards
Our commitment to quality begins with clearly defined standards tailored to meet diverse customer requirements. Whether it’s functional prototypes or production-ready components, we adhere to stringent metrics to deliver consistent, high-quality results.
Our engineers also work in tandem with a dedicated Quality Assurance and Compliance team, with annual audits to ensure continued operational excellence.
2. “Eating Our Own Dog Food”
Quality isn’t just a promise—it’s how we operate. As a company with a strong manufacturing legacy, we rely on our own materials, technologies and processes headquartered at our Ricoh UK Products Ltd. factory site, as well as supporting RICOH’s global operations. Each year, we print tens of millions of parts for our colleagues, ranging from jigs and fixtures, tooling aids, application housing, kits, digital inventory and more.
This “eating our own dog food” approach ensures continuous improvement and a genuine understanding of our customers’ challenges through our own extensive experience.
And don’t worry, it’s not just industrial 3D printing – we operate across a full suite of industries, such as automative, medical, academic, aerospace, consumer and more. See for yourself.
3. Global Manufacturing & Innovation Heritage
RICOH’s global manufacturing legacy spans almost 90 years. At Ricoh 3D, we have responded to the changing demands of the modern workplace and harnessed this manufacturing experience to provide a full range of end-to-end solutions in 3D printing, disrupting today’s marketplace.
Our commercial acumen and portfolio continue to grow – as do the benefits for our customers; whether it’s removing tooling costs, slicing product development time or achieving mass customisation; additive manufacturing can save you time, money and better serve your needs and the needs of your customers. And if you’re a small or large business, our objective remains the same: to make your processes more profitable, productive, sustainable and secure.
Our extensive global support network means that you will always have the support you need, when and where you need it.
4. ISO Standards Compliance
Working the right way, right away.
Our processes adhere to internationally recognised ISO standards, ensuring consistent quality, safety, and superior performance. By maintaining these certifications, we reinforce our commitment to delivering dependable, high-quality products.
But as we mentioned, it’s not about meeting industry standards, it’s about exceeding them… And our customers and partners are integral to this. Through our co-creation activities, we adopt a customer-centric approach, whereby we identify the potential for enhanced standards and new model introductions.
For instance, further to our ISO13485 certification, to support one of our medical clients, Ricoh 3D introduced a reverse osmosis water system in one of the medical production cells, allowing for high-pressure jet-washing of parts to remove all impurities, meeting our partner’s critical needs.
5. Advanced Processes & Workflows
We leverage Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and other risk assessment tools to identify and address potential challenges before they arise. This proactive approach guarantees a streamlined and efficient production process.
6. Centralised Data Systems
By utilising centralised data systems, we boast a SSOT (single source of truth) and maintain complete traceability and transparency across all projects. This ensures seamless communication and alignment between teams, customers and partners.
7. Continuous Improvement Culture (Kaizen)
In 1946, RICOH’s Founder, Kiyoshi Ichimura defined the RICOH Group’s Founding Principles, which instruct us how to do business, encouraging us to constantly improve and contribute to the wellbeing of our families, customers, and society.
Today, our employees see Kaizen as an integral part of their ways of working, motivating them to engage in doing something a little bit better every day through the deployment of the RICOH Way Production System (RWPS). The RWPS empowers every employee to identify opportunities for innovation and efficiency, and this relentless focus on progress keeps us at the forefront of the additive manufacturing industry.
8. Machine & Process Capabilities
Our state-of-the-art machinery and validated processes enable us to deliver exceptional results, whether producing intricate geometries or high-volume runs for our contract manufacturing customers – otherwise known as ‘managed print’ or Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS).
Every stage is designed to ensure reliability and precision. For instance, we utilise statistical process control (SPC) to validate builds in our managed print environment, which is further supported by strong foundations in process capability knowledge.
The result? Accurate repeatability for mass production, and you can waste less time checking parts!
RICOH’s manufacturing heritage is realised at every stage of the customer journey and in line with Quality Management System ISO9001. As phrased by Head of Additive Manufacturing, Mark Dickin, “we engineer in our quality to give our customers quality.”
9. Revolutionary Software
We leverage industry-leading software such as SolidWorks, nTop, Magics (Materialise) and ToffeeX to optimise every design for additive manufacturing (DfAM). These tools enable us to create innovative, highly efficient designs tailored to the unique capabilities of additive manufacturing, ensuring quality parts, optimal performance and effective material use.
- SolidWorks – Parametric modelling and surface modelling
- nTop – Implicit modelling, latticing, lightweighting etc.
- Magics – STL manipulation and build creation
- ToffeeX – Optimising cooling for fluid systems
10. Passionate People
At RICOH, we know that our strength is in our people. We work across 180 countries and employ over 80,000 people and continuously look for ways to bring new opportunities to our employees. Within Ricoh 3D, behind every solution is a team of dedicated professionals passionate about making a difference through a commitment to meticulous quality… Not only do we support your objectives, but we proactively contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), ensuring everything we – and you – do, helps us realise a sustainable future.
This commitment is at the heart of our success.
Quality You Can Trust, Across the E2E Process
From initial consultation to final delivery, our end-to-end processes are underpinned by a steadfast commitment to quality, as exampled above.
We are trusted by a diverse ecosystem of customers, partners and stakeholders including the NHS, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Volkswagon, Toyota, Gravity Industries, AMUK, Materialise and many more.
Contact us today to learn how we can bring your vision to life with precision and reliability.