Consumer 3D Printing

3D printing has come a long way from the prototyping phase and started showing its impact in different industry verticals such as Automotive,Aerospace,Energy etc. One notable vertical among these is the consumer industry. There is an old saying customer is the king. At the end of the day the success of a product or service offering is entirely dependent on customer satisfaction. The industry landscape for the consumer goods is featured by some of the  multinational companies that own different brands. which is more customer oriented these days. According to reports published by market research firms, 3D printing by the end of 2025 can have a market impact of 200-500 billion dollar, out of which 100-300 billion will be in consumer goods. The consumer 3D printing market can be segmented into :

What is being printed :

1) Apparels ,clothing and cosmetics

    Footwear industry started using 3D printing as a method to get rid of the requirement of molding . But with the development of technologies, 3D printing footwear will be mass produced. One such example is the adoption of Digital light processing (developed by Carbon) by ADIDAS for the new product launch called as Futurecraft 4D. DLP technology is capable of generating designs for midsoles that are impossible through conventional manufacturing. Mainly intended for the athletes, Adidas claims that the 3D printed footwear offers superior performance owing to the nature of designs and material options. Similarly Reebok has entered into a partnership with BASF a materials company for the creation of shoes known as Liquid factory

                         Ministry of supply is a startup founded by MITgraduates who has leveraged 3D printing to make Knits and office wear. The printed knit don’t restrict the movement as they are engineered in multiple dimensions. It is reported that the wastage of material on comparison with traditional manufacturing technique is minimal. The printed knit claims to be free of wear and tear as it is shape programmed. 3D printed fashion is a latest entrant as Danit peleg was the first the first fashion designer to make 3D printed clothing commercial. The recently finished met gala has many celebrities dawning 3D printed clothing. The feature about 3D printed clothing is again the material usage. The design freedom of 3D printing has helped Chanel, a popular brand in fashion industry to produce mascara brush. The technology employed was selective laser sintering. The advantage of printing the brush was that it microcavities created held a larger amount of mascara. The texture had made the mascara hold on for a longer time.The brush was actually mass produced, to be exact 50000 a day.

2) Jewellery

Companies like EOS has come up with printers that are compatible with precious metal powders capable of directly printing jewelry. The printer is called as EOS precious. The 3D printing of precious metal is estimated as 1.8 billion dollars by market research company smartech. 3D printing helps in customization as well as printing complex designs. Cookson’s gold E manufacturing is one such company based in UK that leverages 3D printing. 3D printing is used for indirect manufacturing wherein wax moulds printed are used in wax casting. This helps to save time,energy and cost associated with handcraving. Solidscape is one such company that makes printers capable of producing wax patterns.

3) Consumer electronics

Electronics printing is done with material jetting technology. Conductive and insulating inks sprayed on plates are solidified with UV light. 3D printing brings value to electronics with multi material printing. This will facilitate manufacturing of enclosures and circuits simultaneously, hence simplifying the assembly process. Nexa3D, Optomec,NanoDimension are some of the companies that makes printers suited for the electronics industries.

4) Food and Hobby printing

This section involves printing of food and collectibles. Collectibles are miniatures and figurines that are smaller versions of may be buildings, characters etc. BeeHex is a company funded by NASA. It has developed food printers capable of printing pizza which will be helpful for astronauts. Food printers offers possibilities such as automated cooking, customized nutritional food and mass manufacturing. Foodini and Zbot pancake bot are some of the other printers available in the market.Foodink is a London based restaurant that works entirely on 3D printing.

  What does 3D printing bring in :

1)  3D printing brings in the term customization. The taste of a customer cannot be left unheard. A typical customized product has high set up and labor costs. To add to these is the lead time. In a fast moving world 3D printing offers the solution to all this in a consumer driven market place.

2)  Design freedom is the innate feature of 3D printing helping in producing shapes that cannot be realized with conventional manufacturing

3)  A 3D printed product does not need a huge inventory and moulds for producing objects as a result of which modifications can be made in a model on the fly and dispatched. This eliminates the need for warehouses.

Challenges that stall 3D printing going mainstream:

The current methods of 3D printing are more suited for low volume manufacturing. There is need for production to go mass scale. Speed and scalability are the two major concerns. Even though multi material printing is around which adds value in the consumer section majority of the materials offered are proprietary. This requires a material purchase from the printer manufacturer. Fused deposition modeling has issues of surface finish on printing polymers. While resorting to selective laser sintering to process polymer materials is that the prints only come in black or white. The drivers and advantages of AM can be put in two categories: Process innovation and Product innovation. Consumer goods that address a large volume market has struggled to find applications in process innovation

The future of 3D printing in consumer goods industry will be fueled by the following fcators:

1) Improvement in process capability of machines

The speed and scalability issue has been addressed by printer manufacturers. Carbon and HP have launched printers with advanced processing capabilities. Another breakthrough is the use of million laser technology developed by companies such as EOS and Farsoon which will again facilitate large scale processing.

2) The new business model

There has been more consumer engagement these days and business model has shifted from B2C to C2B. The main reason is the potential of the 3D printing technology. FastRadius and Xometry are demand based print services firms that has raised immense funding . These fundings will help companies to establish a stronger network. Platforms offered by companies like FastRadius will help customers identify potential application, conduct engineering evaluations and check feasibility to scale up production. This will help the consumer industries identify whether an application has scalability or not. Another factor that prevents the customer in chosing online market places in the lack of knowledge in designs. It does require some expertise. This issue will be addressed with On demand printing firms using machine learning based quotation engine. These predict the manufacturability of uploaded designs and sends analysis to customers. This would mean that the C2B model will gain more prominence in consumer goods and consumers can get the print directly delivered at doorstep, once he goes ahead after checking the feasibility of the print. It can be said that with the funding received by on demand market places will strengthen the firms for global expansion and 3D printing will make more penetration into the consumer goods industry. The development of workflow management softwares will also help in the process.

3) Open material platforms

With companies like Ultimaker starting open material platform which integrates about 80 companies developing compatible print profiles for FDM printers there will be a wide spectrum of material options. Companies such as HP and Origin have come up with idea of open material platform. Such a platform has some advantages that will benefit 3D printing of consumer goods :

  a) Increased & Continued Innovation

Open market allows design engineers and R&D teams to work from an existing set of materials. It facilitates a larger pool of ideas that can be quickly deployed on an open platform without legal concerns.

  b) Global Engineering Teams

Transition of a newly developed material to a product gets accelerated. In house teams receive global material exposure. Challenges are solved more rapidly than would be possible within a closed model.  

c) Inexpensive & Accessible Technology

A multitude of material options in different price bands helps technology adoption, finally making the technology more accessible to a range of customers. More printers are now compatible with 3D party materials. As the material price come down 3D printing will gain even more traction and more consumer goods being 3D printed. On a closing note it can be said rather than investing on printers,On-demand 3D printing will become the norm for mass personalized goods like jewelry, home accessories, fashion etc