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3D Printing: Just one Component of the Up-Coming World of Digital Manufacturing
3D printers use a technique called extrusion additive manufacturing to build objects by layering out metal, plastics, composites, and other materials. 3D printing is already having an impact on retail, traditional manufacturing, automotive, aviation, finance, construction, and electronics markets.
Gartner predicts that the 3D printer market will grow from $288 million to more than $5.7 billion by 2017 as consumer and enterprise demand accelerates for the technology.
A recent study by Appinions found that the top ten influential companies in the 3D printing market include Autodesk (ADSK), Amazon (AMZN), Home Depot (HD), GE (GE), and Makerbot (recently acquired by Stratasys). And there are ample new companies joining the new 3D printing market space. 3D printer startup companies include Formlabs, CreoPop, Shapeways, and Sculpteo.
David, a kick-start desktop 3D printer project, for example, is attempting to bring 3D printing to the desktop: “every plastic product, even filament, starts out in pellet form. Because of this, raw pellets are readily available in thousands of different materials, colors, and grades. By printing directly with plastic pellets, David can print with many more materials than traditional 3D printers – making him useful to many more people and industries.”
But despite the promise of 3D printing, many say that the technology just isn’t mature enough yet. Even Charles Hull, who is attributed by many as being the ‘father’ of 3D printing, for example, said that “there are going to be tremendous advances in manufacturing capabilities with 3D printing, but you need to understand that it’s in concert with other advances in automation and computing and so forth. So 3D printing isn’t necessarily the only component. There’s a lot of things in the digital-manufacturing world that are advancing together to really improve local manufacturing. Sometimes 3D printing is used as a substitute word for the whole digital-manufacturing field. And you kind of have to be in the manufacturing realm to understand or appreciate that. It may be OK that 3D printing is used as a shorthand, but it’s only a part of a broader movement.”
