For a 36-year-industry, 3D printing sure acts like the new kid on the block. Despite the first beta machines being commercialized in 1987, the technology continues to grow strongly as innovators and practitioners continue to find new materials, applications and methods to apply it.
For nearly three decades, no one has tracked this growth more closely than Terry Wohlers, who recently oversaw the release of the Wohlers Report 2023, offering data, analysis, trends and forecasts for the sector, now widely referred to as additive manufacturing (AM).
Wohlers Associates, now part of ASTM International, said in the recent 404-page report that global revenues for the AM sector as a whole grew by 18.3 percent last year. While down slightly from the 19.5 growth registered in 2021, Wohlers said this still reflects the market’s overall recovery from the pandemic.
Strong growth projected
Terry Wohlers says that in just the past decade the value of the global AM market has soared from about $2.3 billion to roughly $18 billion last year, and he sees the potential for much greater growth in the coming years.
The sector also continues to host growing events such as the RAPID + TCT 2023 trade fair in Chicago in early May. That show, North America’s largest 3D printing event, featured 130 technical presentations and more than 350 exhibitors showcasing various types of printers, automation, software and materials, ranging from polymers and metals to ceramics.
The Formnext Expo 2023 –– the world’s largest 3D event –– will be held this coming November in Frankfurt, Germany, and is predicting some 800 exhibitors and more than 30,000 visitors.
Additive manufacturing continues to face challenges related to scaling production. More automation is needed to help speed manufacturing and reduce manual labor costs. To that end, HP Inc. at the RAPID+TCT show launched its new HP Jet Fusion 3D Automation Accessory and HP Jet Fusion Powder Handling Automation Solution. These “are designed to streamline workflows and cut down on costs for industrial 3D production,” says HP.
A voxel-based approach
Helio Additive is attacking the issue from a different perspective. Co-founded in China in October 2020 by former Covestro AG executive David Hartmann and Polymaker CEO, Dr. Luo Xiaofan, Helio Additive is now a Delaware corporation. It has institutional investors from Germany, The Netherlands and angel investors from around the world, and just secured $1.55 million in new funding.
Helio is developing a new, voxel-based approach to preparing 3D print jobs. (In 3D computer graphics, a voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space.) Helio’s idea is to recognize that thermal and flow conditions are unique for each voxel in a 3D printed object, and this should be taken into account during printing. It’s a physics-based slicing approach, using software to consider all these separate voxel conditions to better prepare extrusion parameters during the print job, explains Hartmann. Helio has built a sophisticated simulation engine to explore the process.
An ultrafast printer
On the hardware side of things, Nexa3D used the RAPID show to introduce its XiP Pro industrial 3D printer designed for large build volume and ultrafast printing. The Ventura, California-based firm says the machine “prints four times faster than the fastest industrial 3D printer currently on the market.”
With a 19.5-liter build volume, a single XiP Pro is said to deliver the daily throughput of at least four competitive resin-based printers, “allowing users to dramatically change the economics of 3D printing production, on top of reducing capital investment in equipment.”
A wood-based filament
On the materials side, Mannheim, Germany-based GEHR, a family-owned producer of thermoplastic semi-finished products, recently introduced a 3D filament from a sustainable material called Sulapac®. Helsinki, Finland’s Sulapac Ltd. developed the novel, wood-based filament, which is designed for professional 3D printing with high dimensional stability and excellent elastic properties.
The new product, called ECO-FIL-A-GEHR® Wood, is made of Sulapac®, which consists of recycled wood fibers mixed with biodegradable biopolymers. The eco-filament gives the printed objects a natural look and feel and a haptic touch. It can be used to print both extremely robust and stable parts as well as light, highly detailed objects. It meets U.S. and European Union food-contact requirements, is certified industrially compostable by the Biodegradable Products Institute, contains 72 percent USDA-certified bio-based content, and leaves no permanent microplastic or toxic load behind.
Novel end uses in construction
Many also are finding ways to apply additive manufacturing to novel applications, including in the building and construction industry. There is a lot of buzz now about 3D-printed buildings, though most are being created using materials such as concrete, steel and clay.
Chattanooga, Tennessee -based Branch Technology is using the world’s largest freeform 3D printers to produce dimensional façade panels for attaching to the faces of commercial buildings. Its most famous client is NASA, and Branch’s panels are now adorning the facade of its new Space Camp building at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (USSRC) in Huntsville, Alabama. The building front (and a wall within the inside lobby) now replicates the look and texture of the moon’s surface, derived by using digital data provided to Branch by NASA.
The system being applied features Branch’s CompositeCore™ –– consisting of a 3D-printed, carbon-fiber-reinforced ABS matrix encapsulated in robotically milled, fire-rated, polyurethane insulation foam. Compounder Techmer PM LLC supplies the custom material to Branch, which uses Kuka multi-axis robots to perform both the 3D printing and the milling. It then adds a durable finish to its CompositeCore™ panels, which are mechanically attached to the building face. Branch supplied a total of 148 large panels to the NASA site, where a three-person crew installed them in just six days.
Once thought of as a technology useful only for prototyping or for producing intricate craft items, 3D printing continues to be driven forward by creativity and innovation occurring at warp speed. While many challenges clearly remain, the industry is improving processes, finding new materials, and getting clever in how to apply additive manufacturing in a multitude of useful ways. One could say that this once-nascent industry is finally growing up fast.
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