SmarTech was impressed with HP’s metal printing announcements at IMTS 2018. The company announced a new metals printing technology based on a binder jet approach, a metals service bureau offering (of sorts) that lets new customers try out HP’s new technology, and a group of apparently happy customers, who had tried it out already.

The Second Coming of HP AM

In some ways we see IMTS as HP’s reboot on AM, repeating some of the same, mostly successful, strategic thinking that went into the company’s original entry into 3D printing several years ago:

• What HP was offering back then was a semi-proprietary 3D printing technology for polymers based in part on the company’s long experience of jetting. HP in its various corporate incarnations has more than 30 years of print head and advanced chemistries development.

With HP’s new “Metal Jet” technology, HP is again harking back to its old ink jet technology to some degree. HP Metal Jet is voxel-level binder jetting technology with a bed size of 430 x 320 x 200mm. The new machine will be based on a powder binding technique inspired by MIM (Metal Injection Molding). In the first instance HP Metal Jet will print stainless steel finished parts, then move on to titanium

• HP entered the 3D printing business just after company was split in two. HP was quite clear at the time that it saw the 3D printing of parts as an important new industry and that it intended to be a leader in the field with 3D printing eventually accounting for a major slice of HP’s business. Not only was HP putting itself on the 3DP map back then, but HP established 3D printing as a medium volume production process, lending credibility to 3D printing – much like IBM did with PCs back in 1981.

HP couldn’t quite repeat this act at IMTS. At the time of its original announcement no one had proven that 3DP as a general production technology was viable. This time around metal parts printing is already well established so instead HP offered a strong message that in the addressable markets that HP is chasing, HP was definitely the go to firm for printed metals.

HP Enters the Metal Service Bureau Business

What HP also did at IMTS was showcase a new metal printing service offering – the Metal Jet Production Service (MJPS). This service will be available in the first half of 2019, and is clearly designed to compete with similar services from the giants of 3D printing such as 3D Systems and Stratasys.

Such services have been around for years, but SmarTech does not believe that HP will have much problem winning orders for its service. As we show in our new report, Metal 3D Printing Services: Service Revenues, Printer Purchases And Materials Consumption – 2018 To 2027, metal printing is growing rapidly due to the difficulty of reliably printing metal parts and the desire of some end users (especially in the aerospace industry) to offload technology risk to third parties.

Users of MJPS will be able to upload 3D design files and receive industrial-grade parts in large quantities:

• As with other similar services offered by HP’s rivals MJPS is designed as a lure to future customers of HP’s metal printing technology. First customers buy the service and then when the printers themselves become available they are well set up to become early buyers of the machines themselves. As HP itself puts it, MJPS allows customer to see the advantage before plunking down $400,000 for a printer. (Incidentally, in its IMTS announcement HP claimed that its technology is offered at significantly lower cost compared to other binder jetting systems

• Also, MJPS will allow HP to ramp up its printer production more slowly than if it had to satisfy customer needs with orders in the near future. HP Metal Jet printers will begin shipping in 2020 to early customers and with broad availability in 2021.

Metal AM at HP: Assessing the Risks

We have always been bullish about HP’s long-term prospects in AM and we remain so. However, impressive announcements have to be delivered upon. In particular, SmarTech sees two areas that bear watching:

• One of these is the technology itself. It’s a new technology, a fact in which risks are inherent and HP is claiming very big things for its technology, most notably that it can provide “up to 50 times more productivity at a significantly lower cost. HP is very careful to specify what it is referring to here – “comparable competitive binder jetting and SLM metals 3D printing solutions available as of July 31, 2018.” Productivity claim based of serial production up to 100,000 parts. But things change as new technologies hit the market. Incidentally, for Metal Jet HP compares its machines to industrial metal machines from 3D Systems, EOS or Arcam

• The other risks are in the way that MJPS is being provisioned. HP does not provide manufacturing services. Customers work directly with and pay for manufacturing services provided by a trusted third-party manufacturing partner responsible for fulfilling the order. For example, HP is partnering with GKN Powder Metallurgy to provide Metal Jetted parts to auto and industrial leaders including Volkswagen. HP provides a design compatibility check for HP Metal Jet printing. So in reality, a relationship where the HP has ceded some of the control in an important new venture to others. Partnering can makes sense in some cases but is it going to be an effective pitch to customers who may have more fully integrated service options?

In the 3D printing industry, polymer powder bed fusion technology isn’t what it used to be. It’s not just about two companies anymore. It’s not just about selling machines that are a few hundred thousand dollars to rapid prototyping service bureaus anymore. And, beginning late last year, it’s definitely not just about realizing long term recurring revenues through selling lots of powdered plastic anymore. Today, polymer powder bed fusion 3D printing is more than just laser sintering, and it’s one of the most industry-ready polymer printing technologies leading the charge to revolutionize manufacturing with thermoplastics.

Over the last couple of years, the landscape for polymer powder bed fusion has changed dramatically, and the expansion in the number of companies which are supporting this particular 3D printing technology is having a profound effect on the industry. Not only is HP having some great success with its Multi Jet Fusion technology based on a combination of inkjet and infrared heating technology, but now Xaar, voxeljet, and Stratasys are all involved in commercializing a similar High Speed Sintering technology which also eschews lasers in its process altogether.

Then you have companies like Formlabs, a company known for barrier-busting in polymer 3D printing, preparing to release the Fuse One laser sintering system early next year. At a starting price of $19,999 for a complete setup including post processing, the Fuse One promises some features previously only reserved for the extreme high end of the market, like a removable build chamber for continuous operation.

On the opposite end of the spectrum for the existing laser sintering market, Prodways has continued to see significant growth as a company, in part due to its entry into the laser sintering segment. Meanwhile, its development partner Farsoon is now a globally operating company and actively selling its laser sintering printers all over the world –not just in China.

The focus for most of the industry right now, like in almost all 3D printing technologies, is capturing a portion of the manufacturing market, to expand growth opportunities outside of just the prototyping and product development stages where most polymer 3D printing is used. In order to do this, most companies and users agree that printers of all print processes need to mature from a technical standpoint in order to meet the rigors and economic requirements associated with making production parts. This wave of industrialization has fallen heavily on the powder bed fusion market, and now the technical innovations being developed for both laser sintering and inkjet based powder bed fusion systems are driving a renewed focus on the hardware itself.

With our market modeling capabilities, SmarTech believes that this industry evolution will shift the opportunities in polymer powder bed fusion technology over the next several years to one which favors machine-related opportunities, rather than the current opportunity structure which is driven by high volume material sales.

Source: SmarTech Publishing

Seen above in the graph from SmarTech’s polymer additive manufacturing market models featured in our latest report, Powder Bed Fusion Markets and Technologies 2018, the percentage of overall primary market revenues in powder bed fusion up until the end of 2017 were driven more from the sale of powdered materials rather than the sale of printers themselves. But as the competitive landscape and value chain expanded over the years (with Prodways, HP, Farsoon, and many others ramping up operations in powder bed technologies), the shift back to a hardware-focused market structure began. Going through into 2019, SmarTech expects that investment into polymer powder bed fusion printers will grow significantly, tipping the balance of primary revenue generating opportunities to the printer, as new systems with new production-oriented capabilities and features become the focus. The expansion of polymer powder bed 3D printing technologies is expected to ultimately drive the segment to become the highest grossing polymer 3D printing technology segment in the world by 2025 within professional and industrial printing environments, overtaking the material extrusion market.

For more insights and market analysis specific to the polymer powder bed fusion market, check out Powder Bed Fusion Markets and Technologies, 2018.

By: Scott Dunham
Vice President of Research
SmarTech Publishing

Polymer material extrusion 3D printing is one of several really interesting markets for polymer additive maufacturing, and one that’s largely been responsible for the significant growth in public and corporate awareness of 3D printing technology which occurred since around 2011.  Material extrusion is often referred to as Fused Deposition Modeling –the trade name for the process which was pioneered by Stratasys –but also such terms as Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) and others. The term “material extrusion” is the proper terminology when considering that all 3D printers operate under a certain set of common characteristics, but you can call it whatever you want, as long as you know what it really is. What’s more important than the term you use to describe it, is how this particular 3D printing process has evolved in the last two years, and where this continued evolution will take it in terms of adoption and opportunity in the next five.

To characterize where the technology is at today with regards to the printing of polymers (far and away the most common implementation of the process), material extrusion could generally be described as a flexible and cost-effective process for low to medium volume manufacturing and functional prototyping. It’s most popular iteration is gantry-based three axis systems using direct drive hot-end extruders for 1.75-mm filament materials. However, as a highly flexible process, many different implementations have been developed –and this is really where the beauty of material extrusion can be found. It can be tinkered with and altered in some pretty amazing ways, a couple of which we’ll highlight as examples of where things are headed.

Use of true thermoplastic materials is a primary strength of material extrusion technology, and as new competitors in the material extrusion 3D printing market continue to grow by leaps and bounds, the resulting supply chain of available thermoplastic filaments has exploded. Thermoplastic filaments can be augmented with fillers and additives, and special chemical formulations of feedstock material to create hybrid thermoplastics (such as PC-ABS) is possible. Small changes in the hardware utilized by extrusion printers can enable processing of these more advanced and diverse materials, as the thermal control capabilities of both the extruder and print environment are augmented.

Shortcomings of common implementations of material extrusion are mechanical strength issues in parts in the vertical axis (or ‘Z’ axis) due to the poor inter-layer adhesion of layer by layer thermal extrusion, as well as overall relatively lower productivity of the actual deposition process necessary to achieve detailed prints with most systems. Surface quality of prints is also poor by comparison to other processes, though can be tailored based on printing speed and feature size requirements. To improve on shortcomings of the process, a number of increasingly interesting technical evolutions are now in the early stages of commercialization.

For a couple of years now, there have been a wide variety of relatively lower cost material extrusion systems designed to be fairly modular, accepting various aftermarket or upgraded extruders which are an area of technical development all their own. Alterations like heated print beds that can automatically level themselves are becoming standard features in the market. But these changes are only based on the classic polymer material extrusion printer design. What we’re equally excited about are based on significantly different visions of the technology which we believe will contribute to material extrusion 3D printing technology growing to become a more widely utilized tool for direct manufacturing.

Things like swarm manufacturing cells using a dozen or more relatively small, lower cost extrusion printers in unison through networking, as well as multi-axis extrusion systems, hybrid additive/subtractive extrusion printers, and much more, are all development trends SmarTech believes will usher in the next wave of adoption in extrusion technology. These principles all leverage the great adaptability of the process to make it scalable and accessible, while improving on its shortcomings in creating very strong parts through all three axes. This is to say nothing of the continued advancements in extruders themselves, which are becoming more and more controllable.

Material extrusion 3D printers already generated the most hardware revenue worldwide in professional and industrial environments in 2017. We expect that the widespread support and continued visionary approaches to extrusion printing of polymers will continue to make extrusion 3D printing a huge global opportunity. But it won’t be one that comes to pass without casualties –only those that can continue to innovate based on better part outcomes relative to costs will survive the next evolution of the market.

 

By: Scott Dunham, Vice President of Research, SmarTech Publishing

By Scott Dunham
Vice President of Research, SmarTech Publishing

Recently, I’ve been talking to a lot of people in the 3D printing industry regarding competing polymer 3D printing processes and their future. During the research process for the latest SmarTech market research study, Additive Manufacturing with Polymers and Plastics 2018, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with a range of leaders who are invested in moving the 3D printing industry forward –specifically towards a future in manufacturing, and specifically for printers that make things out of plastics and polymers.

One particular conversation was memorable because of how relevant it is to the industry today. An executive at a very respected polymer and plastics company compared the polymer printing industry, with its five widely established and utilized print processes all supported by various companies, to other technology development paths where a choice had to be made by the major supporting companies about which technology to support amongst several which would accomplish similar goals. In cases like the compact disc, or the VHS tape of the past several decades, those choices ultimately ended up determining an industry’s path.

For polymer 3D printing, it’s fairly widely accepted that there are five available options to print a plastic part, and SmarTech defines these using the ASTM technology definition categories –material extrusion, powder bed fusion, vat photopolymerization, material jetting, and binder jetting. When we look to the future, which of the competing polymer 3D printing processes, if any, will remain in the future of plastic printing at a professional level? Perhaps the best way to analyze the question is to look at what is driving the interest in plastic printing today, and then look at how well each process serves this interest.

It should be undeniable, at this point, that the major interest area driving the market is in the use of printing to support manufacturing, and to ultimately engage in direct manufacturing of robust, end-use polymer and thermoplastic parts. Notice that this an interest area –quite different from the bulk of the activity which defines the plastic printing industry today, which is still prototyping. Prototyping will, by all accounts, continue to provide a level of industry baseline business for several years, but it is manufacturing support and direct manufacturing which will quickly become the growth engine of the market (just look at the growth in revenues from Materialise’s manufacturing segment compared to their prototyping segment over the last several quarters.)

Source: SmarTech Publishing

Polymer powder bed fusion, mostly characterized by selective laser sintering, is generally considered the most ‘industrial enabled’ plastic 3D printing process there is. This is because the technology can directly create the most all around mechanically robust parts while also being able to support volume production and scalability through efficient use of its building space in all dimensions, without the need to spend time designing support structures in parts. Though the technology is costly, limited in material choice today, and can waste material, there is no doubt that powder bed fusion is, on paper, is one of the most attractive choices for more industrially-oriented utilization. As a result, SmarTech’s latest published market forecasts in powder bed fusion predict this segment will generate the market’s largest share of hardware revenues within the next ten years.

However, don’t let that majority revenue share idea fool you –the actual estimate is that the majority share is only just over 30 percent by 2027, meaning that other print processes will control sizeable portions of the hardware spending over the next decade. Ignoring the industrial potential of print processes like vat photopolymerization and material extrusion, however, would be unwise given the technical developments which are ongoing in these areas.

The takeaway which was impressed upon me from this previously mentioned conversation was one which, ultimately many of us in the industry have arrived at independently. Unlike other tech of the past like the CD, with manufacturing technology, there isn’t a single concrete end goal to arrive at –one user may expect or desire a slightly different outcome from the next. And as a result of this, all of today’s plastic print technologies will continue to play an important role in polymer 3D printing over the long term (and likely even some which aren’t well established yet today).

Placing a bet on a single technology isn’t, of course, a bad idea in a market where there are multiple viable processes. Indeed, when looking at the hardware market for plastic printing today, a lot of the industry has been pushed forward by companies which have specialized in just one print solution. But from the perspective of supporting players, like those who will provide new material development, and ancillary technologies like material handling solutions and automated post processing systems, it’s better to be a position to support all these areas. This has been proven recently with both BASF and DSM –two leaders in 3D printing materials development –having restructured their additive businesses to create specific groups or product lines which focus on different print technologies.

Ultimately, there is industrialization potential across the board for polymer 3D printing, and capitalizing on this potential is the key to success in tomorrow’s industry. Each technology is developing its own unique approaches to creating more industrial appeal. As a current or potential future stakeholder in the industry, don’t overlook this point. Competing polymer 3D printing processes could be one of your biggest opportunities –or your biggest threat.