According to Wohlers Associates, a consultancy, the market for 3D printers and services was worth $2.2 billion worldwide in 2012, up 29% from 2011. Since the start of the 21st century there has been a large growth in the sales of AM machines, and their price has dropped substantially. Industrial production roles within the metalworking industries achieved significant scale for the first time in the early 2010s. Their expansion into production ( job production, mass production, and distributed manufacturing) has been under development in the decades since. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches.ĪM technologies found applications starting in the 1980s in product development, data visualization, rapid prototyping, and specialized manufacturing. It may have as profound an impact on the world as the coming of the factory did (.) Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750-or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950-it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing.
Three-dimensional printing makes it as cheap to create single items as it is to produce thousands and thus undermines economies of scale. Materials can range from plastic and polymers as thermoplastic filaments, to resins, and even stem cells. The applications of 3D printing are vast due to the ability to print complex pieces with a use of a wide range of materials.
As the market for 3D printing has shown some of the quickest growth within the manufacturing industry in recent years. However, recent market trends spotted have found that this is finally changing. There are different types of 3D printing such as Fused filament fabrication (FFF), Stereolithography (SLA), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), polyjet printing, Multi-Jet Fusion (MJF), Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS), and Electron Beam Melting (EBM).įor a long time, the issue with 3D printing was that it has demanded very high entry costs, which does not allow profitable implementation to mass-manufacturers when compared to standard processes.
There have been case studies outlining how the customization abilities of 3D printing through modifiable files have been beneficial for cost and time effectiveness in a healthcare applications. Utilizing this technology would replace traditional methods that can be costly and time consuming. There has been a lot of hype in the last decade when referring to the possibilities we can achieve by adopting 3D printing as one of the main manufacturing technologies. 3D printing processes are finally catching up to their full potential, and are currently being used in manufacturing and medical industries, as well as by sociocultural sectors which facilitate 3D printing for commercial purposes.
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