Markus Glasser, Senior Vice President EMEA at EOS gives his view of the trends which will shape the additive manufacturing industry and this generation’s use of the technology.
Over the last two years, 3D printing and additive manufacturing have advanced at a rapid pace, with the development of new technologies that enable digital manufacturing, alongside the creation of more sustainable and intricate parts that set new standards for the manufacturing industry and the sectors it serves.
2022 marks the start of a new wave of changes and advances in the field of additive manufacturing that will redefine the wider manufacturing sector, helping it address some of its longest standing challenges. Some of these changes will happen quickly – others will span the next decade. But the momentum that is now behind the sector, driven by manufacturers, is unstoppable and gathering pace. So, here is my take on some of the areas that are going to be shaping the sector in 2022 and beyond:
Sustainability
Sustainability has become a driving force in society across the globe as nations stride forward to meet the goals they have set for themselves on net-zero economies during the COP26 conference. Additive Manufacturing has long been seen as a route to supporting these goals in a range of sectors due to its digital workflows, warehousing, and ability to support manufacture in the country of use, as well as material efficiency and recyclability.
In 2022, AM will become more dominant as a key route to achieving sustainability thanks to the new opportunities it creates for organisations across the design and manufacturing workflow, and the innovations that will allow it to replace more traditional production techniques.
Market consolidation and interoperability
Additive Manufacturing is a busy marketplace right now, with a vast array of machine options available to companies. As the industry moves forward, we expect to see standards adopted that will make it easier for manufacturers to achieve interoperability and not feel ‘locked in’ to a specific vendor - making it much easier for them to move between, and mix competitive technologies based on their needs. This will create a more innovative environment that ultimately benefits customers. Alongside this, we expect to see further consolidation in the market to a few larger players.
Graduates with greater expectations, skills and desire
For a long-time 3D printing has been becoming more common in education settings, classrooms and universities across the world. From secondary school, students are being introduced to CAD, and now metal and polymer additive technologies, that allow them to see the whole design process through from conception to prototype, design iterations and final manufacturing. They are learning about the impact of manufacturing, consumerism, and mass production on the environment too, and how these new technologies combined with IT are starting to change the equation. All this before they even decide the career path they will take. Degree courses across a wide range of design, engineering, manufacturing, and creative industries benefit from exposure to these technologies too. Over the next decade more and more of our graduates will have the expectations, desire, and skills to see through these and will be the driving force behind a revolution in manufacturing.
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"Additive Manufacturing is an industry that has embraced the digital world."
Digital Manufacturing
The relationship between software, printing and production hardware is getting closer all the time, with barriers falling like dominos. Workflows will become increasingly seamless, not only across production lines, but whole supply chains and new application areas. In recent years, the industry has worked hard to demonstrate that this can be achieved while maintaining the protection of intellectual property, ensuring production quality, and mitigating cyber security risks. The benefits are clear, and the adoption of digital end-to-end workflows is already enabling digital warehousing and on-demand production for spare parts. It will allow companies to dramatically reduce the costs associated with their after-market operations while creating new businesses focused on providing parts and services manufactured locally for a host of consumer and industrial products.
Better application of data
Additive Manufacturing is an industry that has embraced the digital world, enabling entirely digital workflows, from the design screen to the final product. This is bringing about huge efficiencies, but big data and analytics will be the technology that helps makes it even more productive across the globe. In the same way that big data, combined with technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, has allowed machines to identify relationship, patterns, and propose solutions, far quicker than any human could by sifting through data, we can expect the same advantages to become commonplace in digital manufacturing.
Automated manufacturing ecosystems
Additive will become the dominant mass-manufacturing technique. The complete automation and digital workflow that is possible with polymer additive manufacturing in particular, will see it replace high volume, serial production techniques that require both high resolution and high productivity at low cost. Automated manufacturing eco-systems, which require a low level of human interaction, including part finishing, will lower CPP dramatically while ensuring a high level of repeatability and quality consistency - essentially allowing them to move away from the cost plateau some have reached. New market opportunities will open up as contract manufacturers are able to rapidly produce ad-hoc parts orders, with which they have no previous experience. Examples of this might be after market on-demand part production, and the agility to rapidly move from quoting for jobs to production, with minimum tooling costs.
Tobias Hase
"New materials are arriving all the time in our sector."
New technologies continuing to replace the old
Whilst AM has demonstrated a number of benefits to industry, in some use cases technology such as injection moulding have remained popular choices. But the gap is closing with new technologies such as our own LaserProFusion, which will move the industry closer to tool-free injection moulding. Customers can also expect to see the resolution of AM solutions constantly improve, offering level of details in 2022 that have been previously unseen.
Advanced materials
New materials are arriving all the time in our sector. Where historically there has been a focus on strength, production consistency and supporting a wide range of polymer and metal applications, sustainability is now the driving force for innovation. New materials are already bringing about production efficiencies in terms of the amount of material needed for an application, or production steps that require less energy. This, alongside improved material and finished product recycling will help enable companies to achieve their sustainability goals and support the global drive to a more sustainable world.
It’s of course hard to predict the pace at which each of these trends will accelerate, but each and every one of them is already off the starting blocks, and this area of manufacturing is accelerating faster than any other. For those manufacturers making the move to AM, it offers up new and exciting business opportunities such as aftermarket on-demand part production.
We are at a very exciting juncture in the AM world, with so many exciting technological developments taking place and new business opportunities emerging. It is hard to imagine what manufacturing will look like in 2032, but 2022 is already shaping up to be another landmark year for our sector.
