3D printing has moved well past prototyping and into serious production territory — especially for complex, high-precision components like connectors. That shift is the focus of a recent episode of Electronic Design’s Inside Electronics podcast, featuring Benjamin Dopp, Senior Manufacturing & Process Developmental Engineer at TE Connectivity, in conversation with Editor-at-Large Alix Paultre.
Dopp has spent nearly a decade optimizing TE’s manufacturing processes and has helped bring well over a million 3D-printed parts into production. In this episode, he and Paultre dig into where additive manufacturing is genuinely changing how connectors and other complex assemblies get made — and where the real challenges still are.
A few of the topics covered:
- Complex internal geometries. 3D printing opens up part designs — like lattice structures and topology-optimized components — that traditional manufacturing simply can’t produce, while still holding up structurally.
- Part consolidation. Rather than assembling several separate components, additive manufacturing can combine three or four parts into a single printed piece, cutting down on assembly steps and points of failure.
- Scaling challenges. Moving from a handful of prototype parts to production volume introduces its own set of process and tooling questions, which Dopp speaks to from firsthand experience.
- Micron-level accuracy. For connector applications, tolerances matter enormously — the conversation covers what it actually takes to hold that kind of precision at scale.
- Where the technology is headed. Both speakers share perspective on how additive manufacturing’s role in electronics is likely to keep evolving.
It’s a candid, engineer-to-engineer conversation about what’s working, what’s hard, and where 3D printing genuinely earns its place next to traditional manufacturing methods — timely listening for anyone evaluating additive manufacturing for connector or interconnect applications.
Listen to the full episode on Electronic Design →
Check out the podcast on ElectronicDesign.com for the complete conversation, including additional detail on TE’s process for achieving micron-level accuracy at scale.
TE Connectivity uses BMF’s microArch platform for high-resolution connector manufacturing. Interested in what micro-precision 3D printing can do for your own connector or interconnect applications? Get in touch with our team.
