Designers who use 3D printing and additive manufacturing technologies in their work or as part of a hobby should expect to see desktop 3D printers in their companies before the printers make a wider-spread moves to homes. Also of note is the growing number of industries—particularly the airline industry–using metal parts made via additive manufacturing.
Terry Wohlers, president of the additive manufacturing consultancy Wohlers Associates, notes both trends in his Wohlers Report 2015, in which Wohlers recaps and outlines the state of the additive manufacturing—also called 3D printing—industry.
In the near future, more growth in desktop 3D printer sales will come from companies and educational institutions, not for home use, he said.
In other words, don’t look for desktop 3D printers in every home office or maker’s garage in the near future, he added.
But expect the explosion in sales 3D desktop printers to continue. Between 2007 and 2014, annual desktop printer sales saw growth from a mere 66 units to 139,584 units, Wohlers said.
Still, when it came to actual sales revenues, desktop printers vastly outsold industrial machines, though the revenue returned from the much more expensive industry machines vastly outpaced that from desktop printers.
The 2015 report indicates that in 2014, 91.6 percent of sales were for desktop machines and 8.4 percent for industrial machines, but revenue for 2014 was nearly the reverse, with 86.6 percent coming from industrial machines and just 13.4 percent from desktop sales.
The figures for sales in 2014 were $1.12 billion for industrial machines and just $173.3 million for desktop 3D printers, respectively. As for future growth, Wohlers Report 2015 predicts that total global sales in 2016 will increase to $7.3 billion, while in 2018 it will be $12.7 billion, and in 2020 the market is will reach $21.2 billion.
In another perhaps surprising finding, Wohlers discovered that during the past decade, advancements in metal printing and metal materials science have outpaced the same types of advances made for plastics during the past two decades.
In other words, metals are the near future, plastics the farther future, when it comes to 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Many desktop printers rely on plastics material to print the designs made on an attendant CAD or design system.
Additive manufacturing systems for metal parts are increasingly popular, according to the Wohlers Report 2014. When focusing on metal-based additive manufacturing, the report noted 348 metal-based additive manufacturing machines were sold in 2013 compared to 198 in 2012, a 75.8 percent growth. The first report, done in 2000, found fewer than 25 of these machines had been sold that year.
“Companies such as Airbus, General Electric, and Lima Corp. are using these machines to produce complex metal parts for next-generation aerospace and medical products,” Wohlers said.
In May 2015, for example, industrial printer manufacturer Stratasys announced that its printers had been used to produce more than 1,000 flight parts for the Airbus A350 XWB aircraft, delivered in December 2014. Similarly produced components are also included within in-service jetliners in the A300 and A310 family, according to Airbus.
The parts weight 30-55 percent less than traditionally manufactured parts, reduce raw material used by 90 percent and cut total energy used in production by up to 90 percent compared to traditional methods, says Peter Sander of Airbus’s Innovation Cell. Sanders’ group investigates and promotes emerging technologies.
The production method could reduce the total weight on each aircraft by more than one ton. By 2018 Airbus expects to print about 30 tons of metal parts every month, according to a company statement.
