3D Printing Industry Insights

Increasingly recognized as a potentially disruptive technology within the past decade, 3D printing is defined as the cutting-edge manufacturing process of creating a 3-dimensional object based on a digital design by successively printing layers of material, which explains the fact that it is also referred to as additive manufacturing. Unlike the conventional manufacturing process of molding or subtractive techniques, 3D printing utilizes additive processes to build objects layer by layer in a variety of materials in the form of powders, liquids or sheets. As of current, 3D printable materials are generally plastic, metal, ceramics, glass, paper and recently living cells. Through this technology, a single object can be printed in multiple materials and at high complexities such as interconnected moving parts.

Applications of 3D Printing

Since its inception and commercialization, 3D printing has accelerated prototyping of ideas to facilitate inventive problem-solving and increase cost efficiency across various industries ranging from manufacturing and logistics to healthcare and building construction. 3D printing is increasingly being used in the production of complex, low volume, and highly customizable products — in the medical industry, 3D printing has been utilized in the manufacture of custom hearing aid earpieces, dental appliances, joint replacements and more.

In the face of increasing life expectancy due to advancements in medical technology, 3D printing brings high potential in addressing critical medical needs such as printing body parts from the patient’s own cells to improve transplant success rates and prevent deaths from waiting for donors. The introduction of new printable materials could also offer biocompatibility for implants. Advancements in 3D printing could therefore be pivotal in making new medical breakthroughs in the near future.

Why is it important?

Just within the medical and healthcare sectors, 3D printing has made possible a boundless range of applications including general prototyping, anatomical modeling, surgical planning, precision prosthetics, permanent implants, active & wearable devices, bio-printing (tissue fabrication) and more. Not only has this led to increased cost efficiency in drastic cost savings for medical procedures and bio-medicines, but it has also enhanced medical efficiencies in the form of better patient prognosis, customized devices and ultimately more lives improved and saved. In anticipating future developments of 3D print technology and printable materials, the increasing relevance of additive manufacturing is foreseen to make waves across more industries than it already has.

Market Trends

In 2018, the 3D printing industry saw the technology being taken up aggressively by automotive giants such as Bugatti, BMW, General Motors, and Ford, followed by the industries of aerospace and consumer goods. As mentioned above, the adoption of 3D printing in healthcare has steadily risen with its flexibility in the customization to meet complex medical requirements such as prosthetics and bio-printing. On the flip side, the cost of implementing additive manufacturing still runs high for both hardware and software, as well as the scarcity of trained experts in the field. Allied Market Research has mapped out the factors impacting the 3D printing industry and their forecasts on market changes across 10 years in the following diagram.

Previously valued at USD 4.1 billion in 2014, the 3D printing industry has since grown to USD 10.58 billion in 2018 and is projected by Mordor Intelligence to grow to USD 49.01 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 29.48% over 2019 to 2024. Multiple analysts have also forecasted the industry to double every 3 years with annual growth climbing between 10 to 30%.

Investments in 3D Printing

The industry rang in the new year by clocking major investments at the start of 2019 with Desktop Metal and Essentium racking up phenomenal funding rounds of $160 million and $22 million respectively. The former is preparing to reform the global manufacturing industry by launching 3D printers that operate at a mass-production scale, while the latter has developed a High-Speed Extrusion (HSE) 3D printing platform to eventually introduce extrusion-based 3D printing or Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) into manufacturing. Likewise, the unicorns of Carbon, Desktop Metal and Formlabs have seen unprecedented growth since their successful rounds of investment to each exceed USD 1 billion in valuation. As more R&D and proofs-of-concept emerge within the 3D printing sphere, the opportune landscape and its growth potential can only expect more funding rounds and even more investors buying in.

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