Additive Manufacturing industry emphasises end

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Rapid + TCT is one of North America's biggest trade shows and conferences for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry. This year, ID Tech Ex attended and spoke at the show; they interviewed prominent players and observed industry trends. Here is their analysis.

While Rapid + TCT 2022 saw major technology and materials releases across the board from large and small players alike, Rapid + TCT 2023 felt more constrained in comparison. Still, the announcements and releases that did occur at Rapid 2023 consistently focused on enabling medium-to-high volume part production for AM's power users. As the industry courts the users with the most potential to invest further in additive technology, here are some of the new releases that aim to accomplish that goal.

For the companies releasing new printers at Rapid, they shared a common theme: higher productivity. These printers were designed to increase end-user print productivity, whether it be higher speed, more power, or larger build volumes. For metal printers, Eplus 3D released their EP-M400 powder bed fusion machine, which includes four lasers to increase speed and productivity. DMG Mori showcased the Lasertec 30 SLM US, an American-manufactured PBF machine that features adaptive beam control to improve quality and throughput.

There were more prominent releases for polymer AM printers; Creality, Nexa 3D, and Impossible Objects each showcased printers with improved speeds, with the last launching their CBAM 25 printer, a composite 3D printer utilizing sheet lamination that has print speeds 15 times that of comparable selective laser sintering machines per Impossible Objects. Others, like B9 Creations, launched printers with bigger build volumes; B9's new digital light processing (DLP) printer is their biggest yet.

Outside of the printers themselves, companies like Post Process Technologies and HP highlighted their automated equipment that aims to streamline the entire manufacturing line for higher volume production. ID Tech Ex finds that improvements at every single point of the supply chain (pre-printing, printing, post-processing, quality control, etc.) will be critical to encouraging users' continued adoption of 3D printers, which ID Tech Ex predicts will reach ten billion dollars in market value by 2033.

Additive Manufacturing

Investment in innovative industrial 3D carbon fibre printing technology

Beyond hardware, materials and software are other critical elements to a successful AM ecosystem. Software had its moment at Rapid; with Stratasys releasing the Grad CAD Pro suite of software with numerous upgrades targeted for power users, BASF launching their lattice engine powered by Hyperganic, and AMFG and Dyndrite collaborating on an integrated software package for laser PBF printers. As users look to optimize AM operations, software presents opportunities to make AM more accessible and streamlined for different end sectors.

With ID Tech Ex predicting that AM materials alone will surpass 31 billion dollars in annual sales by 2033, that expected growth curve for AM materials will very much be fueled by the release and utilization of higher-performance materials that can go on to be used in more demanding applications, many examples of which were on display at Rapid. Numerous metal powders were launched or announced qualifications at Rapid, like Elementum 3D's aluminum 5000 series alloy, Mitsui's chromium-copper alloy, and Uniformity Labs' Inconel 625 alloy. High-performance photopolymer resins were also released, including Polyspectra's new biocompatible COR Bio resin and a high-performance resin line developed by Nagase. Another interesting release was Jabil's PLA (polylactic acid) powder that Natureworks developed. They are looking to bring the benefits of the most popular material in thermoplastic filament extrusion to the SLS market, an area dominated by nylon powders, per ID Tech Ex research.

ID Tech Ex's interviews and discussions at Rapid + TCT 2023 made it clear that improvements were needed within the entire AM ecosystem to encourage more productive use of AM technology. Pushing towards these productive applications, where AM may be used as end-use parts, is not easy to accomplish, given the inherent limitations of many AM technologies and materials. But in the long-term, end-users will be more likely to invest in AM when they can see how its benefits will directly impact and improve their operations. An optimized AM ecosystem will be critical to convincing more end-users of AM's value-add.

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ID Tech Ex’s “3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing 2023-2033: Technology and Market Outlook” report carefully segments the market by eighty different forecast lines across seventeen different technology categories, four major material categories, and eight material subcategories. These hardware and material forecasts analyze future installations, hardware unit sales, hardware revenue, materials mass demand, and material revenue. ID Tech Ex provides comprehensive technology benchmarking studies, examination and case studies of critical application areas, detailed discussion of auxiliary AM industry fields, and in-depth market and economic analysis. Finally, ID Tech Ex carefully dissects the positive and negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent supply chain disruptions on the 3D printing market.

* Sona Dadhania is a Technology Analyst at ID Tech Ex.

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