The Next Era of Industrial 3D Printing
Here at Connected World, we have long talked about the advantages of industrial 3D printing in manufacturing. Now with sustainability also at the forefront of everyone’s minds, the opportunities are even more advantageous.
But first, let’s look back to look forward, as I always like to do. As most of us know from experience, traditional desktop CAD (computer-aided design) and engineering software was developed for traditional manufacturing methods. This has required engineers to have access to an expensive, high-performance workstation in the office.
In the past several years, we have seen the rise of 3D printing, which offers new opportunities to build things with complex shapes. Grand View Research suggests the global 3D printing market size was valued at $16.75 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 23.3% from 2023 to 2030.
This is partly due to the technology benefiting manufacturers in terms of prototyping, designing of the structure and end products, modeling, and time to market. As a result, the production expenses have reduced considerably, and the manufacturers are in a position to offer better products at reasonable prices. As a result of these benefits, the demand for 3D printers is expected to be prompted more in the coming years.
The challenge is a gap still exists between 3D printing hardware capabilities and the software to take advantage of the potential. This has prevented wide usage and adoption of 3D printing for production applications.