Polymer material use 2020 and 2025
Polymer materials consumption to annually grow by more than 13%
In 2020, the industrial polymer Additive Manufacturing market consumed 14,136 tons of polymer material in forms of filament, resins and powder. This volume is expected to continue to grow due to an increasing system productivity and a growing system base to 26,276 tons in 2025 with an annual increase of 13.2 %.
The industrial polymer material market fuses to a certain extent with the personal use of filament thermoplastic material. However, the displayed numbers only consider polymers processed within industrial applications excluding desktop printers which cost less than EUR 10,000.
The most processed material in the polymer market is nylon based thermoplastic material such as polyamide 12. More than 8,500 tons have been processed with AM technologies, especially as feedstock type of powder. This material is used because of its high mechanical and thermically properties and its proven processibility. The material is also comparably cheap and due to the intensive use, cross industry experience exists. It is expected that polyamide material will keep the dominant position over the next years.
However, users of AM reported that other materials would be more suitable to fit certain applications. AMPOWER believes, that future material development will lead to an increased diversification of the polymer Additive Manufacturing material market. The processibility of existing materials will be improved and new materials will be developed to reduce the dominant use of polyamide 12. This will also lead to a use of better suitable materials for an application, something not always possible today.
Within the thermoset material market, resins for dental application have the highest consumption. This can be explained by the production of grinding splints and aligners, which are often made by thermoset based technologies like Vat Polymerization and Area-wise Vat Polymerization. Due to a high growth within the dental industry the consumption of resin material will likely double until 2025.
AMPOWER GmbH & Co. KG.
