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Canada’s Additive Manufacturing Ecosystem

This article summarizes findings from a full-length study. Read the full report here.

Study Scope

This report examines Canada’s Additive Manufacturing (AM), its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth.

The report includes a discussion of the following:

• Diversity of AM firms, industry bodies, and educational institutions
• AM technologies, their advantages, limitations, and applications in key sectors
• Canadian demand for AM workforce talent
• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canada’s AM ecosystem
• Policies to promote post-pandemic growth of Canadian AM

Study Context

Additive manufacturing, also called three-dimensional (3D) printing, converts a digital design into a physical form by building up layers of material. This contrasts with traditional subtractive manufacturing processes such as machining and milling, or formative processes such as casting, stamping, and injection moulding.

AM is poised to impact global manufacturing paradigms. Decades of technological advancement have led to a proliferation of new AM use cases. AM is a target for research and investment in numerous sectors, including health technology, biotechnology, manufacturing, and aerospace.

The global AM ecosystem is currently growing at 24% a year and is expected to reach US $35.0 billion by 2024.

AM advantages

• Agility, customizability, and flexibility
• Realize “impossible” geometries

Current State

AM is currently best suited for highly complex parts production in low quantities, but it is also incorporated into some traditional manufacturing processes, assists in the production of legacy components, and reduces costs in packaging, logistics, and inventory management.

General Study Findings

Canada is a small power in the global AM ecosystem, currently dominated by the US, the EU (particularly Germany), and China.

Canada has several world-renowned firms and notable success in niches, including metal powder feedstock, metal AM research, and applications in aerospace and health sciences.

A diverse Canadian AM ecosystem includes OEMs, consultancies, startups, industrial adopters, and raw materials producers.

The Canadian government supports the ecosystem through a range of research councils, accelerators, and funding programs.

Study participants voiced general optimism regarding the future of AM in Canada but identified numerous challenges.

Challenges

• Industry is slow to adopt AM due to cost and uncertain ROI
• Government funding programs mainly focus on research, rather than adoption and commercialization
• Canadian firms face strong competition from China and the US, which have economies of scale and better access to capital

What is Needed

With COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions raising awareness of AM, Canada’s AM ecosystem is at a crossroads. Technological advances and global market trends favour the continued growth of AM worldwide, but it is uncertain whether Canadian AM will be a part of this growth.

A strong, focused strategy, and supportive industry-focused policies could increase Canada’s chances of remaining competitive in this quickly evolving industry.

Photo by Xiaole Tao on Unsplash

The Seven Families of Additive Manufacturing

1. BINDER JETTING: Similar to an inkjet printer, print head moves and deposits droplets of bonding adhesive in thin layers over a build platform to join powder material.

• Powdered plastic, metal, ceramics, glass, sand and gypsum

2. DIRECTED ENERGY DEPOSITION: A form of automated build-up welding, metal wire or powder is added to a melt pool on the build surface using a laser or electron beam to fuse the materials.

• Metal wire and powder, titanium, stainless, steel, aluminium, copper, tool steel

3. MATERIAL EXTRUSION: Commonly used processes involve thermoplastic filaments or pellets pushed through a heated nozzle (similar to a hot glue gun), or liquids/slurries through a syringe in thin layers.

• Thermoplastic filaments and pellets, liquids, thermoset resin, biopolymers and slurries

4. MATERIAL JETTING: Print head moves over the build area and deposits droplets of material to form a layer, which is cured by exposure to heat or UV light before the next layer is printed.

• Photopolymers, polymers, metal and ceramic “inks,” waxes

5. POWDER-BED FUSION: Thermal energy selectively fuses powder bed particles to the underlying layers through localized sintering or melting.

• Plastics, metal and ceramic powders, sand

6. SHEET LAMINATION: Sheets of material are stacked and laminated together by adhesives or other chemicals, ultrasonic welding, or brazing to form the part.

• Paper, plastic sheets, metal, foils/tapes, ceramic and composite fibre sheets

7. VAT PHOTOPOLYMERIZATION: Liquid photopolymer in a vat is selectively cured by light-activated polymerization.

• UV or light-curable photopolymer resins (plastics)

Growth of AM

Initially used for rapid prototyping and testing, AM is now also used for small-batch manufacturing, customization, repairs, spare part manufacture, and even some large-batch serial production.

According to the Wohlers Report 2020, the value of all AM products and services worldwide grew by 21.2% percent in 2019 to a total of US $11.87 billion (including sales of industrial 3D printing systems, desktop 3D printers, feedstock materials, etc.)

• AM market size has doubled since 2016
• US $4 billion in venture capital invested in AM between 2016 and 2020

Note: this forecast was made pre-COVID-19.

Quality Control and Product Certification

AM has for years been challenged by variability in the final build quality of 3D printed products.

Well defined and globally accepted standards could facilitate and streamline the qualification and certification of AM-produced parts for use in highly regulated industries such as aerospace, medicine, and automobiles.

Boosting AM adoption and investment in wider applications will require an increase in globally accepted industrial standards focused on product testing, quality assurance, and qualification.

(However, technical advances to ensure high and reliable quality of production are often guarded under intellectual property, slowing their adoption by the rest of the industry.)

Risk Aversion

High upfront set-up costs apply to both industrial scale AM and traditional manufacturing, but AM also faces the challenge of new-technology risk aversion and an uncertain business case.

Adoption of the most expensive, industrial-grade printers is limited to large organizations that can absorb these costs or ones that earn very high margins because of their industry (i.e., aerospace or biomedical).

Lack of Knowledge

Study participants noted a significant barrier to growth is the lack of understanding of what AM is capable of doing.

Some cutting-edge applications of AM, such as in construction, are almost entirely unknown to potential customers.

Some AM SMEs and startups mentioned having to choose between investing in “marketing AM” and investing in their product.

Additive Manufacturing in Strategic Sectors

At current costs and economics of AM technology, over 70% of AM’s market value is comprised of four main industry sectors: automotive, aerospace, medical/dental, and consumer wearables.

Below are key strategic areas from AM in Canada:

Advanced Manufacturing

Defined by the development and adoption of innovative technologies to create new products, enhance processes, and establish new efficiencies.

• AM technologies are considered key to advanced manufacturing technologies in Canada
• Several current AM use cases can be found in the automobile, aerospace, industrial manufacturing, and consumer retail sectors

Automotive

AM can facilitate cost effective small-batch production, design and weight optimization, waste reduction, and the fabrication of complex parts in a single step.

Common automotive use cases:

• Rapid prototyping
• Tooling
• Design optimization
• Spare part manufacturing

There is, however, considerable reluctance to adopt the technology more widely, particularly for structurally essential end-use parts in mass production.

Aerospace

One of the earliest adopters of advanced polymer and metal AM technology. Prototyping is still the most popular use case in the sector, but other use cases include:

• Repairs and spare part production
• End part production
• Tooling
• Bridge production.

A promising area of development is AM-facilitated weight and design optimization.

Tooling and Other Manufacturing Applications

Tooling, which serves dozens of manufacturing-based sectors, aligns well with the advantages of AM, particularly its ability to rapidly prototype, customize, and create highly complex objects.

An interesting use case is “end-of-arm” tooling (an aspect of robotic technology referring to equipment that interacts with parts and components) for robotic production and assembly lines.

Consumer Products

Key drivers for AM growth in this subsector include AM’s ability to prototype quickly, facilitate mass customization, and its ability to respond to changing consumer tastes.

These strengths are particularly desirable in:

• Fashion
• Accessories
• Novelties
• Wearables

Health/Biosciences

Another early proponent of AM technology. AM-based solutions could address some of the biggest challenges in the field, including bioprinting bionic limbs, replacement organs, advanced pharmaceutical delivery systems for smart implants and medical devices.

Currently commercially viable AM 3D printing solutions can help healthcare practitioners and administrators visualize and plan

• Complex interventions
• Create customized devices and implants with complex internal and external structures
• Streamline supply chains to reduce costs

Some current clinical applications of AM include:

• Anatomical models
• Customized implants and braces
• Surgical guides
• Tools and instruments
• Prosthetics
• Dental applications such as dentures, aligners, and dental implants.

Bioprinting — biocompatible materials, cells, and supporting components in functional living tissues–is a promising area of research and development, with impressive recent breakthroughs.

Clean Technology

AM’s inherent advantages in design complexity, weight optimization, and inventory and spare part management allows for improvements in current designs and processes in clean technology, resulting in less energy and material waste, increased efficiency, and reduced environmental impact.

• Metal additive printing is used to produce gas turbines with more energy-efficient designs that could not previously have been achieved using traditional manufacturing
• Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are refining and testing a 3D-printed core with embedded sensors for a nuclear reactor to boost the energy efficiency
• 3D printing of solar cells, producing lightweight, flexible solar panels

Canada’s solar tech AM metal powder manufacturer Equispheres received $8 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada in 2020 to increase production of its metal powders.

Architecture and Construction

AM can potentially address housing and construction challenges in the Canadian North as a cost-effective way of fighting homelessness.

• Work recently began on the largest 3D-printed apartment building in Europe. The Germany project will use the fastest 3D construction printer on the market to build five apartments (total 4,000 ft2) in six weeks

Canada has seen very little commercialization of this technology to date. Only a handful of small firms are working on construction-related AM in Canada, and they are primarily at the R&D stage.

Interviewed industry insiders cited difficulties communicating the value proposition to a sector that is unfamiliar with the technology and reluctant to invest in the expensive 3D machines.

Canada’s Place in the Global Additive Manufacturing Ecosystem

Globally, AM is highly centralized in Europe and the US, which together represent five-sixths of the global AM market.

• Europe contains over half (55%) of the world’s AM firms
• Americas have 32%
• Asia, 13%

In North America, the US represents 90% of the AM market, Canada is 10%.

Canada

Canada represents about 2% of the global AM ecosystem.

However, the Canadian AM ecosystem is diverse, with well-integrated value chains in powder manufacturing, strong expertise in robotics, AI, CAD file management, printer manufacturing, and has seen wide adoption of AM in aerospace and biomedical.

Certain portions of the Canadian AM ecosystem command a global profile:

• Quebec is a leader in metal AM research and powder development
• Winnipeg’s Precision ADM has been Canada’s largest manufacturer of 3D-printed medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic

Study participants noted that adoption of AM in Canada is widespread but largely superficial. Many have described the Canadian manufacturing sector as conservative and reluctant to try new technologies.

Competition

Competition among Canadian AM companies is fierce.

Competition is generally a feature of a vibrant economy, but several study participants noted that competition in Canada for AM talent and investment — along with ecosystem fragmentation — are major obstacles of growth.

• Companies guarding breakthroughs as a competitive advantage is slowing overall growth of AM in Canada
• There are also very few places, and none in Canada, with enough demand to justify the creation of large-scale AM “service bureaus” (print farms) to achieve cost advantages

The Role of Government

Study participants consider the federal government as the most relevant to supporting the growth of the AM ecosystem in Canada (except for Quebec where it was the provincial government).

In 2018, the federal government pledged to invest up to $230M in the Next Generation Manufacturing Supercluster (NGen), a group of businesses, post-secondary institutions and non-profits working to make Canada a world leader in advanced manufacturing.

• NGen identifies AM as one of its four key focus technologies
• Its functions include networking companies in advanced manufacturing, providing funding conducting pilot projects, running feasibility studies, building clusters, and commmercialization
• NGen’s funding capacity ranges from $50K to $20M
• In 2020, NGen announced a collaborative funding of $28.8M over nine manufacturing projects, including a consortium to develop AM-based applications to improve the environmental performance of the energy sector
• National Research Council’s Resources Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) includes the Metal Additive Program, which provides grants of up to $5,000 per project to conduct feasibility studies in metal AM, or up to $10,000 to hire a qualified service provider to design and manufacture a metal AM prototype

The federal government’s COVID-19 aid leveraged AM capabilities in the production of PPE, which is considered helpful for publicizing the AM industry’s importance in producing goods locally.

But only a handful of AM entrepreneurs have noted dealing directly with NGen or IRAP.

• The government could therefore consider a strategy to widen the awareness of its programs to support the AM ecosystem
• Study participants noted the opportunity to develop a national strategy for AM (as has been adopted in the UK and US)

Demand for AM

A relatively small supply of skilled AM professionals is a key challenge to the growth of Canadian AM (and US AM).

AM professionals require a mix of technical knowledge, industry experience, and soft skills:

• Multidisciplinary knowledge (including physics, software, materials science, and a specialized knowledge of AM technologies)
• Design knowledge, particularly Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM)
• High creativity and open-mindedness about design (a high level of experience in traditional manufacturing may be undesirable)
• Knowledge of traditional manufacturing and an understanding of AM’s comparative strengths and weaknesses
• A commercial mindset (including a knowledge of economics, business skills, industry experience, and soft skills) allows workers to identify potential use cases for AM, evaluate their feasibility, and “sell” the proposition to their organizations

Talent Availability

Study participants noted a general lack of AM talent quality and quantity in Canada.

There is little consensus among participants about how to best source the needed talent.

• For junior positions, organizations typically engage directly with university or college programs
• For mid and senior roles, organizations reported using largely informal recruitment methods (people met at trade shows, personal networks)

In-Demand Roles

Labour requirements for the AM ecosystem are changing.

Partial List of Key AM Skills

Education Requirements

Participants said there is no “perfect” education for an AM professional, but some form of post-secondary education is important (a PhD may be “overkill” for many roles; on-the-job training will play an important role).