Technological advances will likely provide cheaper ‘ink’ in a variety of new fit-for-purpose materials (and true colours), and with increasing print speed. Shorter, more localised value chains have immense potential for business. Smaller factories that use 3D printing can be located closer to their products’ end-users, cutting out storage and shipping costs and reducing transport time. With additive manufacturing, mass customisation becomes cost-effective, no small feat in a world that has relied on mass production to achieve scale. And the prototype to manufacturing process can be iterative, rather than separate costly stages, speeding up design to production. Businesses can produce multiple items, or pivot entire lines of product as the market dictates. A single printer can print any number of products. It also offers flexibility in innovation. Unlike in traditional manufacturing, where different parts need to be built separately and then assembled, 3D printing can often meet performance and design needs in one piece, without additional cost. Printing offers great freedom due to the complexity that it enables. Others use adhesives to bind material together. Desktop models use molten plastic, but other machines use lasers to fuse powdered material (including metals) together, or to solidify resin in light-sensitive baths. Food, such as chocolate, can be printed, as can glass, wood and even human tissue. The ‘inks’ that 3D printers ‘print’ with are vast, from plastic (the most commonly used in consumer printers), to metals such as steel and gold. 1Ĭomputer generated blueprints, or models, guide the printers to layer materials into a completed object. Currently, it is a US$8.5 billion market, and expected to grow at a rate of 15% through 2021. While it has existed since the 1980s, it has only been in the last twenty years or so that 3D printing technology has become accessible to consumers and more widely used by manufacturers. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the Publishing Guidelines. On the date of publication, Dana Blankenhorn held no positions in any companies mentioned in this article. Until 3D printing can deliver mass production at a cost competitive with other techniques, these stocks will remain in the dumper. Wood hasn’t given up on the field, recently buying shares in both Stratasys and Velo3D for her funds. But her step back gave critics another chance to criticize her “leading edge” technology investment strategy, and the failure of 3D printing stocks to launch. The industry has, so far, failed to move beyond prototyping in most cases. Stratasys, Velo3D and Desktop Metal have done little better, leading critics to call the whole idea a fad. The first two quarters of 2022 have seen a further slowdown. 3D Systems’ revenue in 2021 was $615 million, below the $646 million of 2017. Companies then moved into industrial markets with specific use cases, like dental implants, knee replacements and wind turbines. The MakerBot, and a 3D Systems version called Cube, failed to catch on with the mass market. Only 3D Systems is currently worth as much as $1 billion, and just barely.ģD printing had a brief vogue a decade ago as Bre Pettis’ Brooklyn-based MakerBot, now owned by Stratasys, made consumer-priced 3D printers based on melting plastic and supported “maker faire” conventions for students and engineers. Desktop Metal (NYSE: DM) is down nearly 13%. 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD), the longtime industry leader, is down 7%. 22 but to sell the leading players as well. The market response is not only to sell PRNT, down 2.5% on Sept. It is focused on “additive manufacturing,” the creation of parts from printer-like machines that drip or cut precisely based on computer designs. PRNT has lost 39% of its value in 2022, nearly double the loss of the S&P 500. 3D printing stocks on the whole have done very poorly this year. Cathie Wood’s decision to leave active management of ARK Investment’s 3D Printing ETF (BATS: PRNT) is raising concern about the whole sector.
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