Global 3D Printing Industry Opportunities and Trends 2020
Published on : Monday 31-08-2020
Factors such as ease in development of customized products, reduction in manufacturing cost and process downtime, government investments in 3D printing projects, and development of new industrial-grade 3D printing materials are driving the growth of the 3D printing industry. Currently, the trend in 3D printing applications is shifting from prototyping to functional part manufacturing in various verticals, such as automotive, medical, aerospace, and consumer goods.
The 3D printing market was valued at USD 13.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach a value of USD 63.46 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 29.48% over the forecast period 2020-2025. At the end of 2018, America Makes announced it was awarding USD 1.6 million to a joint project between Arizona State University and the ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence. In the earlier months of 2019, the project aims to advance post-processing methods for SLM parts.
Opportunities for 3D printing
This report of Industrial Automation Magazine includes an assessment of various end-user industries such as automotive, construction, aerospace, medical, consumers, and others. The medical sector is one of the major end-users for 3D printing and holds tremendous opportunities shortly. Besides, this segment is expected to dominate the market from short to the long term. 3D Printing in the medical industry can be employed for multiple applications such as surgical instruments, dental implants, orthopedic implants, prosthetic implants, cranial implants, and others.
• With technological advancements and product innovations, the use of 3D printing technology has found various applications in a wide variety of areas, such as jet engines, advanced prosthetics, and even living tissue (with the potential to disrupt the entire manufacturing industry).
• The industry is being always driven by technological developments, which promise higher flexibility and enable faster design. Further, manufacturers have realized the advantages that 3D printing offers, such as optimizing material, labor, and transportation costs. Manufacturing units have been able to cut down on material wastage through the use of 3D printing.
• Governments across the world have already started investing in R&D on 3D printing, which has had a positive impact on technology propagation and adoption. For instance, the Dutch government invested an additional USD 150 million in 3D printing-related research and innovation.
• However, the market remains constrained by the high costs of equipment needed to deploy 3D printing on an industrial scale. The lack of an international standards body regulating manufacturers also limits the market growth.
Key Market Trends
• In the 3D printing process, printers use a thermoplastic filament that is heated to its melting point and then extrude it layer by layer, according to the shape and cross-section of the product, to create a three-dimensional object.
• Fuel Deposition Modelling (FDM) has applications in automotive, consumer goods, aerospace, and other industries. This is an affordable solution to build durable and stable parts in these industries. It is also useful in manufacturing complex factors, the designs of which are too intricate for traditional methods to execute.
• Over recent years, advancements in the technique have resulted in the deployment of low-cost FDM solutions and increased market penetration. The method is now being used for bio-printing applications using bio-synthetic polymers. Moreover, FDM has 46% of market coverage among all the technologies used for 3D printing.
Competitive Landscape
The 3D printing market is consolidated due to the majority of the market share are owned by top players in the industry. However, small and medium are upgrading their cloud services, but top players have gained a significant proportion of consumers and also investing huge for more developments and innovation. Some of the key players include Stratasys Ltd.,3D Systems Corporation, EOS GmbH, Electro-Optical Systems, Concept – Laser GmbH, Sisma SpA, ExOne Co., Arcam AB (GE Aviation), SLM Solutions Group AG, Hewlett Packard Inc., Materialise NV (ADR), and Proto Labs Inc., among others.
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