Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are set to rocket from just 22,542 units in 2012 to a remarkable 283,435 units in 2017, according to the latest insights from International Data Corporation (IDC). And when looking closer to home, IDC has begun to notice increasing interest in 3D printing-related topics and opportunities among the media and manufacturing sectors of the Middle East and Africa (MEA). But what is driving this growing awareness and what are the future implications?
3D printing first reared its head in the 1980s as a production alternative for the creation of prototypes in various manufacturing facilities, and to this day it is still primarily used for prototyping and distributed manufacturing. Its role in this process is certainly safe for a long while yet, thanks to its ability to produce exact models of future products at significantly lower costs than more conventional prototyping methods. But as the technology develops, we are beginning to see valuable new applications in construction, architecture, industrial design, the automotive industry, aerospace, engineering, the military, medical industries, fashion, footwear, jewellery, art, education, food, and many other fields.
Despite these developments, 3D printing poses no threat to today’s mass-production manufacturing models. The reason for this is twofold: Firstly, 3D printing remains a relatively time-consuming operation, with printing times ranging from several hours to several days. Secondly, unit production costs remain constant and are much, much higher than in the case of mass production. But the applications of 3D printing in manufacturing are not aimed at competing with modern production models; rather they are designed as complementary technologies that can help drive efficiencies in product development, machine maintenance, and the supply of spare parts.
It is these benefits that are proving increasingly attractive to MEA manufacturing companies, as they can now realistically envisage a time when they will be able to independently print their own unique parts, and thereby reduce their need to call on the services of outside parties. This approach will ultimately improve lead times and quality, reduce the complexity of the manufacturing process, and speed up the delivery of end products to the customer. Put simply, 3D printing brings with it a whole new wave of flexibility and efficiency advantages for various manufacturing industries.
Another key driver of the market’s future growth emerged in February this year with the expiration of various long-standing patents that prevented competition in the market for the most sophisticated and functional 3D printers. These patents included a technology known as laser sintering, which boasts such high resolutions that it can create goods that can be sold as finished products.
As these patents continue to expire, IDC expects to see a significant drop in the price of such devices, which is exactly what happened when key patents on a more basic form of 3D printing — known as fused deposition modelling (FDM) — expired. The result was an explosion in sales of open-source FDM printers, including MakerBot and RepRap. In just a few years after the patents expired, the price of the cheapest FDM printers had decreased from many thousands of dollars to just a couple of hundred.
In this respect, we have already seen numerous interesting uses for 3D printing outside the manufacturing space. Several progressive artists have demonstrated the magic of 3D printing through their artistic works, while there have also been well-documented cases of the technology being used to develop prosthetic limbs for amputees in Africa. Such innovative use cases are already benefiting from the falling prices of these machines, with smaller models for home use now appearing on the market. And the range of materials available for 3D printing are developing dynamically too, with many types of plastic, foam, metal, wood, glass, and paper now cleared for use.
Nevertheless, IDC believes that a focus on discovering new applications for 3D printing and developing internal design capabilities are the most viable long-term strategies for leveraging this technology. Investing in the ownership of expensive top-notch 3D printers can easily be offset by outsourcing the printing process to a locally established third party. This is a crucial consideration, because now the exorbitant hardware costs can still destroy many otherwise valuable business cases.
When combined with the ever-broadening range of applications and materials available for 3D printing, it is clear that the expiration of key technology patents and the resultant fall in prices will play a critical role in spurring the period of phenomenal growth that IDC expects to see in the global 3D market over the coming years. And once the inherent advantages of employing 3D printing technology within the manufacturing process become even more obvious, there will be no bounds to how far its use can go. So watch this space!
The columnist is group vice president and regional managing director for the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey at global ICT market intelligence and advisory firm International Data Corporation (IDC).