3D Printing: An Updated Concept of Manufacturing
Published on : Tuesday 02-06-2020
The arrival of advanced consumer-grade 3D printers is making its presence in the home offices owing to widely decrease in the cost of the machine. 3D printing is massively impacting and influencing the consumer for the purchase at the consumer level to meet the demand for customized home manufacturing and personal touch manufacturing. Moreover, it is also changing the way of manufacturing by reducing the pressure for errors in design, prototyping, and production.
It is expected that the 3D printing concept is already developed and widely commercializing in the developed and developing nations to increase their production rate per day and further enhance the return on investment (ROI) compared to conventional manufacturing concepts.
![3D Printing in Manufacturing Sector](https://www.industrialautomationindia.in/images/content/products/15910322863d-printing-in-manufacturing.jpg)
The Current 3D Printing Industry
The global 3D printing industry is expected to reach over USD 55 billion by 2025 at a growth of 15.5% CAGR rate from 2020-2025. According to Statista, the industry is expected to witness the total shipment to cross 8 million markets by 2027. While, prototyping, proof of concept, production, marketing samples, art, and education are the main applications for 3D printers in the global industry. 3D printing used to implement Industry 4.0 concept, primarily includes the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, robotics, and 3D printing is an integral part of that vision.
HP, Proto Labs, 3D Systems, Stratasys, Materialise, SLM Solutions Group, Dagoma 3D, Nano Dimension, ExOne, Organovo, and Voxeljet are the main manufacturers of 3D printers in the global market. Moreover, startup companies such as Formlabs and Stratasys are focused on product development to make the market competitive and further scale up 3D printing production.
“Dagoma 3D intends to increase the production capacity of its 3D printers, it up surging 50 to 70 printers per day. To which, the company introduced three more production facilities, including two in France and one in the US. In 2020, they are targeted to ship 15,000 printers in the global market”
The role of 3D printing in the manufacturing process
The manufacturing companies are primarily exploiting the technology to make high profitable and involve innovations to slowly initiate replacements for conventional traditional manufacturing.
In manufacturing, 3D printers are primarily aimed to minimize the time and cost required to achieve a viable product and achieve overall production efficiency. According to Carnegie Mellon University and NextManufacturing Center, 3D printing is expected to consider as brand-new technology to initiate advanced manufacturing based on the level of personal computing or smartphones. Moreover, 3D printing plays a significant role in the development of the manufacturing sectors, including automotive, electronics, aerospace, and telecom among others. The concept targeting to gain refined and perfected in the manufacturing process for the end-use of design and rapid prototyping.
It is expected that there will grow in demand for 3D printers in short-run part production and potential to drastically advance and quicken the manufacturing of products from rapid prototyping to home manufacturing.