3D Printing Hardware: The Foundation of the Additive Manufacturing Industry
In the thirty years since the founding of the 3D printing industry, countless printing technologies have been invented, patented, and commercialized – from fused filament fabrication to digital light processing, selective laser melting to binder jetting, material jetting to sheet lamination, and every unique printing technology in between. With every new technology, the additive manufacturing market grows its ability to expand into new applications, end-users, and industries. From this perspective, 3D printers can be considered the core foundation underlying the additive manufacturing industry’s growth in recent years. Therefore, to understand the future progress and outlook of additive manufacturing, it becomes essential to learn and understand 3D printing technologies and hardware.
IDTechEx’s 3D Printing Hardware: 2022-2032 report is designed to explain and analyze the growth of 3D printing hardware technologies and sales; it is made to be useful for any company in the 3D printing supply chain: materials makers, printer manufacturers, service providers, end-users, and more. This report breaks down the market into 17 technology segments to create 17 COVID-19 adjusted forecast lines for each individual segment. The forecasts provide a ten-year outlook for 3D printer installation base, new installations, replacement unit sales, and revenue from 3D printer sales, all broken down into 17 forecast lines.
3D Printing Hardware Breakdowns: Technology Analyses and Impartial Technical Benchmarking
Within this report, IDTechEx individually analyzes over 30 printing technologies by their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In addition, information on hardware manufacturers, technology readiness levels, and key industries for each technology are provided to offer a full picture of each printing process from a technical and application perspective. These 30 printing technologies are categorized by four material classes, thus providing key technical insights into each additive manufacturing subspeciality: polymer, metal, ceramic, and composite.
Additionally, IDTechEx has conducted benchmarking studies within each material subspeciality to compare technologies by key parameters: build volume, build speed, resolution, price, and more. These comparisons were constructed through the extensive database of printer models and technical details collected by IDTechEx over the past seven years of 3D printing coverage. Through this impartial benchmarking, IDTechEx will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each technology for its end-users.
Lastly, IDTechEx will present its research conducted over 2020 and 2021 to offer its perspective on the current status of the 3D printing hardware market. This includes identification of the key 3D printer manufacturers by revenue, rankings of the dominant technology segments by market share, and emerging technology highlights. To provide further context on the 3D printing hardware market, IDTechEx will extensively discuss the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 3D printing market in 2020 and 2021, which was studied through many interviews with 3D printing companies and quantitative analysis of public revenue data. Through this analysis, readers will understand how much the pandemic adversely affected the additive manufacturing market and what the industry’s recovery will look like in the next ten years.
Market Forecasts for 3D Printing Hardware
Using extensive primary and secondary research, IDTechEx has constructed a detailed 10-year market forecast for the 3D printing hardware market. These forecasts break the market down by install base, technology type, and unit sale type. This analysis reveals that 3D printing hardware will peak at a market size of $9.9 billion within the decade.
Supplementing the forecasts are full profile interviews of the major 3D printer manufacturers, which range from industry giants like Stratasys and 3D Systems to major disrupters like Markforged and Desktop to rising startups like Inkbit and 9T Labs. These profiles give insight into the companies leading the industry, their position amongst their competitors, and the opportunities and challenges they face in the future.
Source: idtechex.com