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.
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 diversity of metal AM technologies has steadily increased in recent years. Currently, over 20 distinct working principles exist, with about 200 OEMs supplying equipment. The large variety of working principles can be roughly grouped into powder bed fusion, energy deposition and sinter-based metal AM technologies. Each group and individual technology principle bring their own advantages and challenges regarding material choice, geometrical freedom and post processing. AMPOWER provides a closer look at the latest developments of the most relevant technologies in its technology section of the AMPOWER Report 2024.
Polymer additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is a rapidly growing technology that has revolutionized the way we design, prototype, and manufacture products. The technology has found widespread applications in a variety of industries, including aerospace, automotive, medical, and consumer goods. In this chapter, we will explore the size of the polymer additive manufacturing market, including its current state and future growth prospects.
In 2023 the market reached revenues of more than EUR 5 billion through sales of equipment, material and part manufacturing services. The suppliers forecast a strady growth.
Various industries have successfully adopted polymer Additive Manufacturing. Consumer Goods and Automotive are using the freedom of AM to increase the comfort of their products by designing lattice structures.
The AMPOWER Report clusters industries into the categories of “Civil Aviation, Turbines, Helicopters”, “Defense” “Space” “Automotive, Motorsports, Trucks, Buses”, “Energy, Powerplants”, “Oil, Gas”, “Medical”, “Dental”, “Industrial”, “Tooling, Molding”, “Naval, Rail”, “Part Manufacturing Suppliers”, “High Tech”, “Research Institutions”, “Consumer Goods” and “Others”. The following chapter will describe the polymer Additive Manufacturing market from the perspective of these verticals.
The polymer Additive Manufacturing material market is expected to significantly grow in the coming 5 years. Few industries especially drive the material consumption.
Over the next years, it is expected that the material market will adapt more and more to the properties required by the applications. The extended material portfolio within all printing categories will eventually enable the development of new applications. Further material development will contribute to the maturing of the polymer market.
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).
Currently 17 different polymer Additive Manufacturing technologies are commercially available. Many of them in an early market penetration stage looking for fast growth and increasing market share.
Main footprint of polymer AM equipment is made up of established technologies such as PBF, Material Extrusion and Polymerization processes. The dominance of these technologies is most likely going to remain. Upcoming technologies have yet to prove their claims and solve challenges, that current technologies cannot overcome.
AMPOWER believes, that the equipment market will decrease in numbers of OEMs to move from the innovative technology market to a mature market.
The metal Additive Manufacturing material market is expected growing significantly in the coming years. On one hand material consumption is driven by high end applications in aviation and medical. On the other hand, sinter-based technologies will drive steel applications in automotive and industrial sector.
Over 17 different polymer AM technologies are currently known and all at different stages of technological and industrial maturity. This section evaluates important characteristics describing the state of the industrial use of polymer AM today and in the future.
While the Dental industry has already implemented mass customized products, the Consumer Goods industry is also picking up the advantages of Additive Manufacturing. The mass customization of lattice structures within sporting goods or eye ware frames is just another step for the polymer Additive Manufacturing market to take to widespread industrial use of AM.
Courtesy of DMG Dental