Analytics beyond the "one" 3D Printer market


Analytics beyond the "one" 3D Printer market
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Analytics beyond the "one" 3D Printer market

Analytics beyond the "one" 3D Printer market


There's a certain amount of buzz around 3D printers again at the moment, and with some justification. The global market reached $5.6bn in 2017, an increase of 16% from the previous year with the market now seeing household company names like HP and GE driving sales, competition and innovation. But what is the next major step for this technology and for its paradigm-changing potential? Is the much-touted move into mass production a reality yet, or is it a classic example of hype and speculation masking reality?

Consumer vs industrial
There was a time when the consumer market was predicted as the next big thing but this market never materialized. In spite of this, the sub $5,000 Personal/Desktop side of the market has still seen unfettered growth, with massive numbers of printers selling into Educational, Professional and Hobbyist markets. But the biggest area for growth potential lies not in this market, but in the Industrial/Professional sector. Machines in this class are the ones that will continue to make headway into the much bigger, global $12 trillion-dollar manufacturing market.

The journey to mass production
Part of the difficulty in assessing the total Additive Manufacturing market is that, like many markets, it is currently made up of many sub markets. "Additive Manufacturing" is alternative name for "3D Printing" and helps to convey that these industrial printers can be used for more than just the prototyping of parts. There are many different types of 3D Printers and many are aligned with certain vertical markets. Some are more efficient at "mass customization" (making lots of the same thing with minor tweaks for each - such as for hearing aids or for invisible dental braces) while others are good at low-volume end-part production. There are in fact at least seven (7) core technologies of AM machines with lots of variants. Additionally, there are many different materials which can be 3D printed. The big, major materials categories are Polymers (Plastics) and Metals. The ultimate goal of the Additive Manufacturing market, as the name implies, is to have these printers be used in final part, mass production but how close to that goal are we right now?

Well, unexamined general analysis and statistics might show that we are still some ways away from this reality. Indeed CONTEXT's own latest research reveals that of all the industrial/professional 3D printers sold globally in 2017, prototyping remains the most popular use of 3D printers, accounting as the principle use for 31% of machines sold. Mass production, by contrast, accounts for just 2%.

Indeed there are grey areas in this data in that Mass-Customization can be seen as a type of mass-production, or when considering the fact that there is no standard definition of "mass" production (is 5,000 units? 500,000 units?) but fuller examination of the data beyond just this single snap-shot of data tells even a different story and is where analytics comes into play. If we just look at one of the fastest growing segments of the market - Metal 3D Printers, a segment that has seen a 48% CAGR over the last 5-years - End-Part Production reportedly accounted as the principle use for 62% of those shipped in 2017. And for Polymer 3D Printing, we see that 13% of those types of printers shipped in 2017 noted to have Mass Production as their principle use, a big jump from the 2% reported for the industry total.


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