If you take a look at 3D Systems 2013 10K, which became available on the 28th of February, you’ll see that organic growth for 2013 was $104 million.  This represents 65% of total $160 million revenue increase for 2013. This means organic growth of the company was 29.4%, pretty good considering they fit within 3D Systems previously stated guidance and adhere to historic growth rates for the 3D printing industry (~ 30%).

There is a caveat, however.  3D Systems classifies organic revenues as any company that 3D Systems has owned for more than twelve months. Is twelve months really long enough to successfully integrate acquired resources and technologies into 3D System’s larger operations? If it isn’t, this would essentially mean that 3D System’s truly “organic growth” would be overstated.

This is all a big deal, of course, because of 3D System’s aggressive acquisition strategy over the last five or so years. By our count, 3D Systems acquired 33 companies from August 2009 to May 2013. Since then, it has added at least twelve more to the fold. This kind of conspicuous behavior usually perks the ears of market analysts and investors. Some cynical analysts might view this as a tactic to pad les impressive growth numbers.

Certainly, the case can be made to use twelve months as a cut-off for the term “organic” in 3D printing. Many of the companies 3D Systems have acquired are not much bigger than a start-up. It is believable that these smaller operations could be integrated into 3D Systems quite quickly.

Also, a twelve month period matches the development cycle for new equipment releases in the 3D printing industry. It makes sense that when new technologies have been infused in the new annual product line, it should all be counted as organic. Another argument might be that, given the similarity of many 3D printing technologies, it may be easier to integrate new 3D printing technologies with existing ones than perhaps other advanced technology sectors.

But to SmarTech, twelve months still seems a tad optimistic. This is especially true given the large number of acquisitions 3D Systems has made over a very short amount of time. Integrating this quantity of resources and new technologies into your product line takes time. It is a bit of a hard sell that all of these resources and technologies could be seamlessly integrated into 3D Systems operations in twelve months or less. Perhaps 3D Systems should fall in line with many other industrial sectors and use a more conservative timeframe for measuring organic growth.

If this is true and true “organic” growth is actually slightly lower than 29%, should this concern investors? For those with a large investment window, not too terribly much. The bundle of technologies defined as additive manufacturing or 3D printing offers real value as a prototyping, educational, and manufacturing tool for the right applications. These technologies will only improve over the next decade and aren’t going away anytime soon.

The consumer market for 3D printers is becoming more mature as more professionals gain experience with these amazing machines. Consumer segments are becoming clearer and so too are their differing demands for 3D printing equipment.

One segment where we are finding a lot of change is in design-oriented professional groups. Many architectural and product development firms are moving past the trial-run periods for 3D printers and scaling up their investment in 3D printing equipment.  Instead of upgrading to larger professional printers like some analysts have speculated they would do, many firms are choosing instead to purchase multiple compact 3D printers. These arrays of 3D printers are connected, forming 3D printing hubs or “clusters”.

Print jobs can be sent to any printer in the network based on the requirements of the job. Meanwhile, larger jobs can be split to multiple printers that may take advantage of 3D printers’ different performance. The task of splitting up print larger jobs into a few printable components is a small price to pay for the increased flexibility of the cluster.

Adding on compact printers allows design firms to efficiently scale up their 3D printing capacity with demand, while still running their older 3D printers that aren’t obsolete yet. There is little risk that 3D printing firms will get ahead of their capacity demands by adding onto their 3D printer cluster incrementally. Because of this, most design firms are able to keep their 3D printers running at nearly full capacity.

3D printing clusters offer substantial benefits to design professional. Compact printers fit better into existing facilities, eliminating expenses for creating new spaces to house the larger body printers. Their compact size also facilitates integrating 3D printers into existing design processes, as the printers can be placed on a desktop, as opposed to in some other room, floor, or building.

Having multiple smaller build boxes may also better fit the demands of design firms. A greater amount of compact 3D printers can accommodate more from professionals at once (making the technology more accessible). 3D printing clusters can also accommodate the larger projects by splitting parts of the build to multiple 3D printers.

A good analogy is laundry mats. Nearly all laundry mats have many smaller washing machines, as opposed to a few larger machines. More machines allow the laundry mat to serve more customers at once, while a customer with a large load can use multiple machines if they need to.

While a larger washing machine may be better at handling large single loads, for a customer with a normal sized load, they large washer presents a dilemma. Either you 1) throw your normal load into the large washer, or 2) wait for more customers to come in so you can use the washer together. Option one will take up a large percentage of the laundry mats capacity and garner mean look from customers coming in after you. You also end up using a lot of energy and resources to clean a relatively small amount of clothes. Option two isn’t any better, as you may be waiting for a long time for enough people to show up to fill the large washer.

Understanding adoption patterns like these have wide reaching strategic implications for 3D printer manufacturers. For instance, customers may prioritize 3D printers that play well with others (i.e have better connectivity to the network, and print consistently off of CAM/CAM software, etc.).  It may also mean that design-oriented users will reward novel compact printers that can augment the overall capabilities of their cluster. Examples may include compact printers with unique build envelopes, or that can print in novel materials.