elimold brand logo
194861502

What are the prospects of 3D printing?

3D printing is a technology that can be widely used in our lives and can also make a huge difference in our lives.

3D is widely used in manufacturing, medical, education, aerospace, military, and other fields. 3D printing technology has been considered a rapid prototyping technology for a long time since its birth in the 1980s. Still, in the past five to ten years, the application area of 3D printing technology has gradually evolved beyond the manufacturing of prototypes to the manufacturing of small and medium-sized batches, becoming an additive manufacturing technology. 3D printing will reshape the competitive landscape of the trillion-dollar manufacturing market by enabling product performance improvements. 3D printing is deeply integrated with traditional manufacturing in a way that creates added value. Suppose you are a member of the manufacturing industry. In that case, you cannot choose to ignore this technology because it is not a gimmick, additive manufacturing is not just a manufacturing process, but the core of the process is its impact. This process increases a product’s full life cycle benefits and reshapes a company’s competitiveness.

Obama, in late 2011 and April 2012, twice in public speeches will, strongly advocate rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing technology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and robotics as three important pillars to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry, which can be relied on these technologies to make manufacturing “back to the United States. Subsequently, the U.S. 3D printing industry was supported by the government. Five government departments, including the U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, will jointly fund $45 million, and a consortium of businesses, schools, and nonprofit organizations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia will contribute $40 million to establish a manufacturing innovation institute in Ohio funded by government and the private sector. -The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAM III) is developing 3D printing technology.

There is no doubt that 3D printing is a large ecosystem and that 3D printing is driving the development of distributed manufacturing due to the combined development of device hardware, design software, printing materials, post-processing, and quality control technologies. The 3D printing upstream and downstream ecosystem composed of these companies will continue to change in the coming years; as new companies continue to enter the 3D printing field, 3D printing companies continue to launch new technologies and establish new partnerships, we will see more clearly in the future the trend of 3D printing to further evolve in the direction of manufacturing.

3D printing overview

1, the characteristics of 3D printing.

(1), without mechanical processing or mold, directly from the computer to generate parts.

(2) can create the shape of the traditional production technology that can not be manufactured.

(3) in the case of a good design concept and design process, the technology can also simplify the production and manufacturing process.

2、The advantages of 3D printing.

(1) the cost of manufacturing complex-shaped items does not increase. In essence, it is printing on the computer using digital models, through which the manufacture of a complex-shaped item not more time, skills, or costs than the printing of simple square consumption.

(2) A 3D printer can print many shapes and make a differently shaped item every time, just like an artisan. Due to the adoption of layered manufacturing, it can even print the whole piece we need, rather than the traditional manufacturing only through parts processing and finally the assembly.

(3) Innovative production model. Because of the computer-controlled digital model, printing has no excess material waste, and printing out is the product we need; Secondly, 3D printing can achieve the maximum use of space compared to the traditional model. It is not necessary to machine tools and CNC apparatus; Finally, rapid prototyping, from a design to the product, often takes only a few hours, compared to the traditional mode is not a half-star faster than the traditional mode.

Prospects for development, policy support

3D printing will become a new growth point for future industrial development, and this industry belongs to the key support objects of national strategic emerging industries. The “thirteenth five-year national strategic emerging industries development plan” clearly pointed out that to build additive manufacturing, the development of the industry chain is to promote the development of high-end equipment and new materials industry breakthroughs, leading the new leap of China’s manufacturing initiatives. 3D printing, as an emerging “to mold, reduce waste, reduce inventory” and other characteristics, has gradually become an important supplement to the current manufacturing methods. From the perspective of countries around the world, many developed countries have also introduced many policies to support the development of this technology.

The market size is huge and is expanding rapidly.

For the entire 3D printing industry, two parts are the most important to the country but also the most attractive to the development of the industry of 3D digitalization, and the second is 3D printing. As far as the digitization market is concerned, the scale has achieved steady growth. Between 2014 and 2017, the global scale of 3D digitization went from $2.8 billion to $3.7 billion, with a CARA of 7.64%, and the entire global market is expected to reach $5.9 billion by 2023. Looking at 3D digitization in China, China, the largest market in the entire Asia-Pacific region, has gone from RMB 2.26 billion to RMB 3.38 billion between 2014 and 2017, with a CAGR of more than 10%, and is expected to reach RMB 6.6 billion by 2023.

From the 3D printing point of view, in this field, China has gradually become a pivotal part of the world, and the United States is still the hegemon of the industry. 3D printer number is also rising; in 1998, just a few dozen units, 2022 professional-grade printer has nearly 30,000 units, and the world has more than a million units, and the growth rate is rapid.

Wide range of applications

The Wohlers Report 2021 questionnaire survey, shows that in 2020, the industry using 3D printing is the automotive industry, leading the way, accounting for 16.4%. The consumer sector/electronics and aerospace are close behind with 15.4% and 14.7%, respectively. The areas marked as others in the chart refer to a wider range of other industrial sectors not listed in the column, such as mineral processing, chemicals, water treatment, wood/paper, and other industries that are not currently available for a separate listing.

Industry in the growth stage

Relying on the development characteristics of key factors in different life stages of the industry for a comprehensive determination and analysis of the industry’s maturity, the global 3D printing industry is currently in the middle of industry growth. 3D printing originated in the United States at the end of the 19th century; the core idea of 3D printing was pioneered by the photographic sculpture and terraforming technology researched in the United States; in 1986, the world’s first company producing 3D printing equipment 3D Systems was established, since then, the United States began to emerge several 3D printing companies.

According to Wholes, 3D printing has seen an average annual growth rate of 26.1 percent in global revenue for the sector, including equipment, materials, and services, for more than 30 years since its inception. It has grown at a double-digit rate for 23 years. This industry has tremendous untapped potential, and due to the epidemic’s impact, the 3D printing market has maintained positive growth despite a slowdown in 2020. From a technological perspective, 3D printing has experienced a “negative profitability” import period with new products and poor quality, specializing in R&D and technology improvement. Now some of the technologies are more mature, sales are starting to climb, market share is expanding, and competitors are coming in, in line with the characteristics of the growth period. In the future, there will be a long growth period and eventually transition to maturity, reaching the highest output value and total profits.

Industry Chain Analysis

The upstream of the 3D printing industry chain is raw materials and basic accessories; raw materials are divided into metal-specific materials and non-metal-specific materials, which are the raw materials for basic accessories and 3D printing consumables. Basic accessories include core components (motherboard, a mirror system, chip, electron beam gun, laser, DLP light engine, etc.) and auxiliary operation system (3D scanner, 3D modeling software, printing control software and slicing software, etc.);

Midstream is the R&D and manufacturing of 3D printing consumables (metal powder, photosensitive resin, engineering plastics, ceramic materials, biological materials, etc.) and 3D printing equipment;

Downstream is 3D printing services and applications; 3d printing is mainly used in aerospace, mold casting, biomedical, automotive, military, and other fields.

Upstream Analysis

3D printing raw materials include engineering plastics, photosensitive resins, rubber-like materials, ceramic materials, metal materials, etc.

The classification of materials is mainly divided into metal and non-metal materials. In 2019, China’s 3D printing materials market size was 4.1 billion yuan, up 26% year-on-year, of which metal materials account for about 40%, corresponding to a market size of about 1.6 billion yuan.

Midstream Analysis

The midstream mainly refers to 3D printers; from 1988, when the first printer was born, to now having more than a million printers, the annual CARA is more than 20%.

Downstream Analysis

3D printing is mainly used in aerospace, medical, automotive, and other fields, with the most widely used in manufacturing and medical fields.

Applications in the Medical Industry

The most encouraging application of 3D printing is in the medical industry, where 3D printing has the potential to save lives or dramatically improve healthcare. 3D printing technology can be customized for medical devices such as prosthetics, dental and orthopedic implants, and hearing aid housings using non-living tissue materials such as metals and plastics. Of course, these are only the briefest use of 3D technology in the initial stage of things; we can boldly imagine that in the future, test 3D printing technology, we can print blood vessels and even print some of our body organs; it can be said that this is not only a change in our way of life but more is also to help us can better cope with some of the diseases in life.

In aerospace, military applications

Because 3D printing has the characteristics of high precision and fast time, it is also widely used in the aerospace field. Boeing, for example, has used 3D printers to produce environmental control ducts (ECDs) for its new 787 aircraft. With 3D printing, the ECDs can be produced as one piece, without assembly; and save fuel due to the reduced weight of the 3D printed parts.

Of course, 3D printing is also widely used in manufacturing, like car manufacturing; weaponry, like tank manufacturing; in our clothing industry, food industry, education industry, etc. can see its figure I believe that with the progress of technology, we use 3D printing technology to our lives in all walks of life to go.

Write at the end

Elimold is a high-tech design and manufacturing enterprise with product model design at the center, manufacturing at the core, and providing a full range of product design and manufacturing technology services for business purposes. It serves various fields such as automotive, robotics, new energy tools, communication, aerospace, marine, security, fitness equipment, medical, etc. Among them, the annual output value of auto-modeling rapid soft mold body-in-white stamping pilot production is over 100 million.

Elimold has strong technology output capability, with well-known design and manufacturing technology experts and innovative professionals; we can provide competitive solutions and products for customers under the scientific standard, intelligent manufacturing, and advanced management system.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *