Basis for the AMPOWER Report 2023 are personal interviews as well as secondary research from publicly available sources. The personal interviews were conducted directly by AMPOWER staff. The respondents were typically the respective Additive Manufacturing managers or directors with insight into the technological as well as economical company figures.
Read the AMPOWER Report Table of Content to get an overview of all chapters, figures and graphs of the AMPOWER Report.
The spectrum of polymer Additive Manufacturing technologies has become immensely wide and is continuously increasing.
As of today, 17 different working principles are known with over 334 vendors supplying machines. To successfully implement polymer Additive Manufacturing, the printing process and its material properties must be understood. AMPOWER provides an overview of the different technology principles regarding process chain, part and material properties and maturity.
The number of different metal AM technologies has increased continuously over the last years.
As of now, more than 20 different working principles are known with 210 OEMs supplying machines. The large variety of working principles can be roughly grouped into powder bed fusion, material deposition and sinter-based metal AM technologies. Each group and individual technology principle bring its own advantages and challenges regarding material choice, geometrical freedom and post processing. AMPOWER provides a detailed look at the most relevant technologies in its technology section of the AMPOWER Report 2023.
The following overview provides key activities of investors and start-ups in the field of Additive Manufacturing for the year of 2022.
The degree of industrialization of metal Additive Manufacturing is assessed in the following by the average utilization of machine capacity at users as well as the type of product the users manufacture in their specific vertical.
AMPOWER differentiates between 20 metal Additive Manufacturing technologies. While each technology is at a different stage of technological and industrial maturity, every industry has developed to a different level as well.
Medical and Dental have fully embraced metal Additive Manufacturing and have started with the production of end parts since more than a decade ago. Extensive knowledge on qualification of production equipment and validation of production processes was gained by the players in these industries. Paired with excellent business cases, the healthcare industries profit from use of metal AM and can be regarded as main driver for the industrialization of the technology.
Various industries have successfully adopted metal Additive Manufacturing. Medical and dental have fully embraced the technology and exploit its potential in daily serial production. However, today others lead the field in sales.
The AMPOWER Report segments the whole market into the industries of “Automotive, Motorsports, Trucks, Buses”, “Civil Aviation, Turbines, Helicopters”, “Defense”, “Space”, “Medical”, “Dental”, “Energy, Powerplants”, “Oil and Gas”, “Industrial”, “Tooling, Molding”, “Part Manufacturing Service”, “Research Institutions”, “Consumer Goods”, and “Other”. The vertical of “Part Manufacturing Supplier” was added with this year’s report to provide a better overview how many systems are delivered to entities that act as component suppliers to multiple industries.
The following sections segments the unit sales and revenue by the main metal AM technologies. Powder Bed Fusion is today by far the leading the technology with most sales and system vendors worldwide. However, other technologies catch up and become an viable alternative for users future production facilities of series parts.
The market analysis by region will provide insights into the current state and outlook of the metal Additive Manufacturing market for three key areas of the world.
At the early days of metal Additive Manufacturing, Germany was the leading market region with its first movers in L-PBF technology CONCEPT LASER (now GE), EOS, REALIZER (now DMG MORI) and SLM SOLUTIONS. Hence, many pioneering users were located in Germany and Europe. By now, however, the market share is more evenly distributed with suppliers and buyers from all over the major industrial regions of EMEA, AMER and APAC.
The regions of interest are categorized into the groups of the Americas (AMER), the Asia Pacific region (APAC) consisting of East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania as well as the group of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Additive Manufacturing experiences massive growth and is considered to be one of the key technologies on the path of digitalization and industry 4.0. The ability of manufacturing parts directly from a CAD file is creating high expectations in the market. Nevertheless, the metal Additive Manufacturing market size is still a niche compared to other manufacturing technologies. Currently, the market is valued at about EUR 3.0 billion with a projected growth of CAGR 26.1%.
