Crozet, VA: SmarTech Publishing, the leading provider of industry analysis and market forecasting data to the additive manufacturing industry, has published a new report examining polymer 3D printing trends for technologies used in professional and industrial environments. The report reveals that growth expectations are returning to the polymer segment for 2018 and beyond, with numerous print technologies playing a role in long term growth.
While each individual print process widely adopted and supported today are analyzed in-depth in their own individual SmarTech Publishing reports being released this month, this new report provides a cost effective cross-market analysis to determine how the overall polymer industry is segmented in terms of real opportunities ranging from printer hardware to materials.
Amongst the growth drivers which are observable and relevant across material extrusion, powder bed fusion, vat photopolymerization, and various jetting 3D printing technologies, the drive to industrialize each of these areas in the areas of automation, post processing improvements, scalability, and repeatable high uptime performance is a clear driver market-wide. However, where such high end performance requirements are still not necessary, the drive to accessibility of printer technologies through cost reductions and diversity of compatible polymers and plastics is also a driving force across all technologies.
More details about the report can be found at https://additivemanufacturingresearch.com/reports/polymer-additive-manufacturing-market-trends-2018/
About the Report:
This polymer 3D printing trends report features a wealth of cross-market data which segments the overall market opportunities and metrics tracked by SmarTech Publishing– including hardware and material shipments, revenues, installations, and more– by major polymer print technology, end user market, regions, and more.
SmarTech believes that to truly understand the opportunities in 3D printing, stakeholders need to know both how individual print processes may have differing adoption patterns and opportunities, but also how the available processes all affect demand and development of one another.
Unlike technology adoption debates of the past where a single winner may be expected to emerge, major chemical and polymer companies like DSM, BASF, and DuPont have all collectively agreed that all the current popularized polymer 3D printing processes widely supported today have long term market viability, but will be adopted and used in different ways.
From the Report:
• Polymer 3D printing technology companies have nearly universally begun to adopt strategies that place injection molding at the forefront of their competitive benchmarking. While competing against molding processes creates a high barrier for adoption in terms of widespread use in end-use part manufacturing, polymer printing technology also has significant technical improvements that must be more widely pursued and implemented in order to evolve into true manufacturing tools.
• Leaders in the 3D printing industry are now fully committed to designing and implementing upgrades, new process architectures, and post processing equipment to improve reliability, predictability, machine productivity, and automation. These efforts differ significantly in practical implementation depending on print technology, but certainly are setting the stage for a true manufacturing revolution in polymers and plastics.
• Until these new technical upgrades and developments can fully come online in the market, polymer 3D printing technology has continued to grow by adding value in specific applications like producing end-use parts indirectly by printing various kinds of forming tools to be used in molding processes.
