Of course, everything will be highly customizable and this customization will be affordable. From cars with the custom interior through smartphones and fashion ending with everyday items. There will be a 3D printing bureaus in every city where you can get your new or customized part.
In the coming years more and more companies will introduce more 3D printers in their production processes. This is due to the continuous reduction of the quantities of the production pieces. To reduce these costs, the 3D print is the only solution to date. So many orders for small productions are planned, therefore the 3D print will be the master.
By the end of the decade, AM will be an established manufacturing method like many others before. We will look back and think how foolish we were handling things today and how complicated things were.
Most likely it will be very common to start your prints from your CAD software just like you would print a 2D drawing of a part today. Everything will be tightly integrated and your printers will be robust and smart. As pointed out before we see a lot of growth in AM suppliers today and this will go on for a bit longer.
However, in most cases there are no set standards for really anything. This is something I sincerely hope will change. We need more established standards so that products from different vendors will become compatible with one another.
As a company, we will help shape and set certain standards in the AM industry. At the end of the decade, AM will achieve high process stability and reproducibility. To make this happen, the industry needs to introduce quality and process control software and equipment as well as automation similar to the semiconductor industry e.
It will also need a standard data interface for all the equipment to allow for seamless process control integration. For the next decade, we expect AM to become widely established in many industrial applications and to gain a relevant role in series production. Expanded training and education programs will help to re-think outdated manufacturing structures and introduce completely new product development processes. Additionally, we assume that standards will play a more important role in the coming years.
The development of large and expensive machines is going to be driven by industrial, space, and military applications. The rise of reliable 3D printing with highly durable materials like PEEK or metal will eventually make them ubiquitous in low-volume production applications. Building spacecraft and airplanes is what comes to mind here since those are usually made in small quantities and require highly specialized components.
We are also going to see 3D printers designed to work onboard manned or unmanned spacecraft in a microgravity environment since it makes more sense to launch a 3D printer with a supply of filaments rather than a fixed set of readily made parts which could prove useless upon arrival. Another area where we can expect amazing new technologies to emerge is bioprinting.
While I personally doubt we are going to see machines capable of printing fully functional implantable volumetric organs like human hearts or livers, I am convinced 3D printing of skin, cartilage, or similar tissues will become a thing in the late s. I do not believe however that 3D printers will make it as a consumer product available for everyone. At least, not in the next 10 years. But they will indirectly transform how we produce things, how we do business, and how we live in countless ways.
Is really hard to predict how will be AM by the end of decade as it is a long period. But in my opinion the main trend is clear — AM becomes standard technology and practical tool for mainly professional use.
The second and natural trend is consolidation of the market. The small companies who were pioneers in the industry will be taken over by big names, or they will disappear. In addition to continued expanded materials offerings and more complex geometries, we hope this decade brings an acceleration towards connecting the end-to-end digital thread across the complete AM workflow.
The possibility of AM achieving an Industry 4. With this, sustainability must also be a critical focus for all parts of the AM process this decade in the shift towards scalable implementation. This will be supported by the heavy integration of 3D organic design tools, advanced simulation tools, and manufacturing functionalities into individual platforms, which will mostly be cloud-powered.
The repeatability of machines and in-situ monitoring will allow for smarter certification methods, and this will fuel the number of parts being mass-produced by additive manufacturing. As a tool in the manufacturing tool box, additive will become more and more valuable over the next 10 years.
The development of new machines will drive the emergence of new and specialized materials. As various user experiences and applications emerge, more specialized and developed materials will be accelerated. The new polymer plastic composite materials can be made possible in a stronger or more flexible characteristic, extending the scope of their use to a variety of engineering areas.
And this will lead to increase the use of materials, which will also contribute to ensuring the price competitiveness of the materials. In addition, new various polymer composite materials including metals, ceramics, and other inorganic particles will emerge, and the new 3D printing market will be expanded to apply them to moldings and models.
This will influence gradually to traditional manufacturing markets. They will naturally accept the 3D printing method in near future. On the other hand, 3D printing, which used to be in the production of prototypes, is expected to intensify technical competition to meet the demand of large-scale, high-precision and high-speed for direct production and mass production of various types of products.
The market related to 3D printing industry is expected to grow more than 10 times in the next decade. Two or three years ago, we heard again and again in conversations with users that additive manufacturing was caught up with reality and that the real industrial suitability of 3D printing will probably never be given.
With the past Formnext , the whole thing has changed. We noticed here that user confidence in industrial 3D printing has risen sharply again. We believe this is because we, the 3D printer manufacturers, have recognized that 3D printers must be developed to the same standards as those that have long been used for CNC turning and milling centers, for example. In addition to robust mechanical engineering, PLC controls with industry standards are now also used.
Now it is essential that we machine manufacturers, hand in hand with the manufacturers of semi-finished products and materials as well as with research, continue to advance the professionalism of additive manufacturing, then it will be impossible to imagine industry without this technology in the next few years. That additive is viewed with equal capability and credibility to other production methods molding, milling, etc.
By the end of the decade, 3D printing innovations, partnerships, and collaborations will continue to drive the industry. More production use cases for aerospace and medical 3D printed parts will generate solutions that were otherwise unattainable without additive. These solutions will be large scale, large parts and high volume, as the industry is demanding more and more from additive manufacturing. I predict the quality control feedback loop will continue to evolve in response to heightened production outputs.
We will start to use the vast production data to train machines to self-correct during the production process, monitoring the system and making adjustments on the fly by detecting tolerance changes. This type of artificial intelligence will continue to collect and analyze data to create an even more seamless and integrated inspection process leading toward percent production yield. The s decade will probably end up with an integrated production line, which will allow users to reach the desired quantities of products in high valued materials like silicon carbide SIC.
During the next decade , additive manufacturing will be increasingly prevalent to become a leading production tool. Industrials are now waiting for the maturation of additive manufacturing so they could integrate it to their production pattern. We work actively on this integrated production line. The success of an integrated production line implies improvements on several steps of the process.
The big step that will allow the most significant leap is the cleaning of the part. This stage opens up serious prospects for improvement. We are currently working to automate the cleaning stage because our technology now allows it! All the process is supposed to unfold with minimum human action to achieve simplified production management in an integrated chain. As 3D printing solutions will lower production costs, their adoption rate within the industry will increase.
We will see the democratization of 3D printing technology: it will be accessible to all, at affordable prices, and even with higher performance. This trend has already been experienced in computing and electronics. Moreover, advances in material selections resins and plastics and metal alloys will continue. Combined with mass manufacturing processes that will continue to gain in performance faster and cheaper , and the ability to machine complex organic structures, we will see the mass production of custom consumer products.
The properties of resins, linked with production techniques and the unique process of 3D printing, will allow the custom production of consumer products on a large scale. For instance, custom shoes and helmets. Instead of having standard sizes such as small, medium, or large, the dimensions of consumer products could be, thanks to 3D printing, tailor-made and follow the unique profile of each consumer.
Finally, our hope is that 3D printing will contribute to the development of custom-made implants and organs that will be available as needed, allowing better and more optimal care for all. In short, 3D printing has become mainstream, and it is inevitable. All the predispositions are in place. There is no reason 3D printing should not be implemented in mass production in all spheres of the industry.
As the technology advances, hurdles around economics, scale, strength and speed of production fall away and demand for AM will ramp quickly. This will be a moment for manufacturers to step back and re-assess their relationships with AM vendors.
Most will simply not stand for vendor lock-in. Instead, they will demand open ecosystems so they finally have their hands on the steering wheel of their own futures. An open additive ecosystem will see more partnerships focused on giving customers greater control of their innovation, more choice in materials, and industrial-scale production at ground-breaking economics.
This will herald a new era in manufacturing that will impact design, time-to-market, design cycles, customization, supply chains, and pricing not only in but for the next decade. In the long-term Additive Manufacturing used at production level will become the key area for applications across industries — ahead of prototyping.
With medical and dental markets as well as customized consumer products such as shoes as first movers, many complex and unique parts will be developed that can only be mass-produced with AM technologies in an efficient way.
Open systems will have the major share of the materials market with global supply chains essential to the success of the AM production. Software and system integration will be easier and interconnecting between printers and materials with post-processing will be automated via the cloud. Dayton T. Horvath, Principal, NewCap Partners. Digital workflows for part design, simulation and manufacturing should finally be efficient, accurate, and seamless across all 3D printing technologies.
Printers will improve to a degree but there will still be segregation amongst the various 3D printing technology categories by part size, part performance, material selection, and deposition rate.
Production applications will be where tooling applications are today and where prototyping was 10 years ago: Mainstream and the focus of the industry at large. The industrial 3D printing trade shows and conferences will remain in name but become increasingly interspersed with other manufacturing technologies ultimately creating a continuum of capabilities for OEMs and service bureaus alike.
Additive manufacturing technologies will establish themselves as a supplement to the technologies known to date, such as milling, turning, forming, welding, etc.
Furthermore, my big hope is that by the end of the decade, designers will be able to think and design components in an additive way. By the end of the s decade, AM processes will be key enabling manufacturing technology in niche applications across industries.
At the end of the decade, we hope and think that plastic 3D printing is firmly established in the industrial segment. As well as that there are many other fields of application. Furthermore, the topic of recycling is a major challenge, as it is a completely sustainable process chain. Hopefully, we will have taken many steps here, ideally we should have already done so.
My prediction for the end of the decade is that Additive Manufacturing will be the defining transformative force in democratizing habitat and mobility on earth and in space. While the hot topic in is metal AM, by the end of the decade plastics will have regained some of its glory. While plastic AM will never reach the volume capabilities of current day injection molding, the quality surely will. And, demand for customization will only continue to accelerate. This leaves the number of applications still requiring the volumes needed for injection molding exponentially decreased, leaving significantly more applications utilizing AM for everyday items.
Ceramics will also finally see their day. Ceramics AM has always been limited by the need for sintering and unpredictable shrinkage. But, with major metal machine builders now tackling these issues with the improved binder jetting systems and artificial intelligence software, the advances they make will just trickle down to the ceramic AM market.
It seems difficult to estimate what segment of the industry will grow faster in the next decade however 3d printers will be widely present in every customized manufacturing process whether it is jewelry, teeth, shoes or human tissues. Criteria such as high accuracy, speed, specific application case will play an important role however new developments on materials and chemistry may push the industry forward.
The future is very exciting, and from these concepts we could perhaps see an AM-based platform that allows the development of a complex mechatronics device for precise instrumentation or even a smart customized device for application in the medical field? Could that be venturing new frontiers for AM. CSEM is developing the technological bricks towards this new vision.
We are extending achievable precision on high-performance metal and polymer materials. Moreover, as AM and printing technologies will obviously not be the manufacturing technology of choice for all desired functionalities, we hybrid AM with different manufacturing technology such as fine machining, microfabrication and casting. Stefan Leonhardt, co-founder and managing partner, Kumovis. By the end of the s, additive manufacturing will be the go-to technology when it comes to the responsible production of goods in many sectors.
Accompanying technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence will moreover play their part in automated production on a daily basis.
In addition, the decentralized production approach will have gained acceptance, so that, for example, personalized treatment of patients using 3D printed medical devices will be accessible directly at the point of care.
In the next decade printing process will become even faster and easier, probably we will see the solutions that will accelerate the mass production processes -3D printing from low-volume production will go in a much larger direction, of course not mass production instantly, but the machines will be even stronger in this respect.
Loop 3D already made a step in this direction and will be continuing its mission. Those who hold the IP to applications will be the real winners in AM. Expect to see those with applications be prime candidates for investment, strategic partnerships, or acquisition. Applications will drive materials and process development, rather than the other way around. Maturity of different AM modalities means that engineers will have greater choice and flexibility to choose the right technology and cost fit for their products.
Standards for AM plays directly into this as reliable, credible standards will be vital for industrial adoption of AM. Much of the standards development work currently underway will bear fruit in the next decade, and standards will begin to form the contract upon how we transact in the AM world.
By the end of the decade, we predict that additive manufacturing will have become an established technology for end-part production. A diverse range of production applications will have been developed, making AM the go-to, cost-effective choice for a variety of applications. The industry will have matured beyond recognition across the hardware, software and materials segments. Standards and best practices for AM will have been established, and the technology combined with other Industry 4.
Software Solutions will be standardized and unified to alternative data formats. New Intelligence combined with tech-workflows and non-Manual interfaces will be influencing almost every company, human, product.
Designers will be the ones to evaluate and still, as today, individualize products. Influences to all processes due to CO2 Emission. We expect to see expansion and commitment to research in AM and more collaboration across all players. We expect to see a lot of AM applications across many industries and expect AM will be established as a mature, cost-efficient and promising approach for new designs, like other manufacturing technologies. By the end of the decade, hands on expertise with 3D printing will be table stakes for professionals in engineering, design and manufacturing.
And 3D printers will be used seamlessly across the entire product lifecycle, from basic prototyping to end use manufacturing. Consumers will interact daily with 3D printed products. It will be an afterthought to them that products like shoes, earbuds, toys, dentures and orthotics among others are 3D printed.
They will just expect personalization and not remark on how their headphones were manufactured. Looking into the future of the 3D printing industry in the next decade, beyond the impact on how people produce and consume products, there will be major changes in the way people interact. By breaking the barriers of traditional manufacturing and logistics, 3D printable content platforms like MyMiniFactory will bring designers behind the scenes to the centre, create the transparency in design and on-demand manufacturing process, and deepen the connection between the designers and end users.
For example, while currently most designers of our daily objects remain unknown, with the assistance of 3D printable content platforms and development of affordable consumer 3D printers, designers can build their own brands and interact directly with their fans.
In this regard, a designer economy will be created, which opens up another way of human interaction and monetization beyond the current social media channels, such as YouTube and Facebook. Driven by companies like Stratasys, I expect the industry to reach new frontiers insofar as print speeds and reliability — two areas that will see the technology likely make inroads into new application areas within its current key industries, as well as open up many new ones.
By the end of this decade, we will likely see a more knowledgeable and experienced AM community, that — certainly at the industrial level — will appreciate the level of technology investment required to meet their exacting and ever-changing application needs.
We will also likely see an increase in metal printers as the technology matures and cost of systems decreases. We will see various industries with a high adoption rate of AM and applications being produced by the millions. The basis for this will be incredible fast printers, automation, lower prices for materials, a bigger material variety and above all, time.
Maybe the most important factor will be time. This adoption just takes some time. The 20s will provide plenty of time. Anyways, I think even in the end of the s, 3D-printing will be a hype topic. But only because its potential is way too high to be already fully leveraged by then. For the decade I see a continuous integration of 3D printing in the manufacturing sector with more and more parts being produced by additive manufacturing. An increasing acceptance and credibility will drive the growth, new sustainable successful business cases and product innovations will come up, fostering a much broader application of AM.
A key driver will be digital solutions accompanying the technology development. Integrated digital workflows will evolve and making it much easier to design and optimize for additive manufacturing. Adoption will not be at a high pace, but a steady growth, not based on a hype, but on realistic use cases where AM can be applied beneficial.
Biomedical companies commonly use 3-D modeling and printing to produce personalized hearing aids as well as dental restorations, orthodontic braces—and most recently, skulls. This past March, after FDA review, an unnamed patient had 75 percent of his skull replaced by a plastic implant printed by the Connecticut-based Oxford Performance Materials.
From organs to O-rings, 3-D printing has prognosticators buzzing over its transformative, and even disruptive, potential. If the technology fulfills the predictions of its most ardent cheerleaders, supply lines that connect mass manufacturers in cheap labor markets with consumers in the developed world will be shortened.
Mass manufacturing in low-wage countries will decline and markets will be re-localized. With a lower bar between innovating and producing, thousands of new businesses are expected to blossom. But the growth of this technology raises a thicket of legal questions. Who is liable if a home-printed design fails to perform? Who owns the intellectual property of codes and the objects they produce?
Physical objects can be trademarked and patented, and digital 3-D files can be copyrighted, but in the Maker universe this is considered uncool and counterproductive to innovation. Three-D printing is bound to encourage counterfeiting, with serious consequences for brand owners. Disney, whose characters are widely copied by Makers, is so far ignoring infringements, but that may change.
Then there are security concerns. Using blueprints downloaded from the Internet, people already have begun printing gun parts. Hackers have stolen personal banking information after creating a widget that fits inside an ATM. As ever, tools can be used for good as easily as for ill. It will be up to myriad government agencies to address the wide spectrum of legal and criminal concerns.
And all new technology produces winners and losers. Additive manufacturing will create new industries and new jobs.
But it may also displace skilled craftspeople, artisans and designers who work with raw materials, just as Amazon displaced bookstores, and desktop printers eviscerated mom and pop copy shops. Thanks to the Internet, we are all writers, photographers, filmmakers, publishers and publicists. Soon, we may all be Makers, too.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is currently helping to develop standards for the industry. Throughout my travels in 3-D, cognitive dissonance stalked me. One can intuitively grasp that additive manufacturing has a smaller resource footprint than subtractive manufacturing, in which designs are chipped or cut away from larger blocks of material.
Shorter supply chains have smaller carbon footprints, and printing on demand could reduce the waste of closeouts, overstocks and other products that never get bought. But the feedstock of 3-D printers—whether plastics or gypsum powders or metals—still needs to travel the world. Moreover, ABS plastic, the principle feedstock of desktop printers, is derived from oil or gas, which are both finite, polluting resources.
PLA, another common feedstock, is made from corn, which also has a sizable environmental footprint since it requires fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation. More important, I worry that the ease and relative affordability of making niche or customized products—with the exception of medical and some industrial applications—is just as likely to speed their disposal: Easy come, easy go.
When new sneaker designs move from idea to retail shelves in weeks instead of months, design fatigue may set in sooner as well. The result? Ever more sneakers on the trash heap of fashion obsolescence, and a devaluing of the creativity that went into producing them. While 3-D printing offers the promise of democratizing design, it does so by letting Makers off the intellectual hook as they bypass deep knowledge of materials and process.
Software figures all that out. And nearly all practical ceramic printing techniques involve extensive post-print sintering that can warp or deform the part. Often, these incorporate shape-memory polymers, materials that can react to changes in their environment such as heat or moisture.
In May , researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena reported printing a submarine that propels itself forward using paddles that snap backwards when placed in warm water 9. The work could lead to microrobots that can explore the oceans autonomously.
But for the moment, the paddles must be reset after each stroke. Such devices could use battery power to reset themselves, but that makes the machine less efficient than one made conventionally, says Geoff Spinks, a materials engineer at the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Another approach to 4D-printed devices involves triggering the action with a changing external magnetic field. US researchers have 3D-printed lattice structures filled with a liquid that changes stiffness in response to a magnetic field 10 — which could perhaps be used to help car seats stiffen on impact. A fluid that stiffens in response to a magnetic field is injected into the hollow struts and beams of a 3D-printed lattice.
The material can be made stiff or flexible. Other, more passive potential 4D printing applications include stents, which could be compressed to be implanted then expanded on reaching the desired site in a blood vessel to prop it open.
Last July, researchers in Switzerland and Italy described a 4D-printed stent that is just 50 micrometres wide 11 , much smaller than conventional ones.
The devices are so small, the team says, they could one day be used to treat complications in fetuses, such as strictures in the urinary tract, which can sometimes be fatal.
Perhaps the most ambitious example of 4D printing is matter that not only moves, but is alive. Currently, techniques for such bioprinting can print tissue, such as human skin, that is suitable for lab research, as well as patches of tissue for livers and other organs that have been successfully implanted in rats. But such techniques are still far from ready to integrate into a human body. Researchers dream of printing fully functioning organs that could alleviate long wait lists for organ donors.
Many inventive ideas about printing matter that moves or changes rely on printing multiple materials together. Last November, Lewis and her lab described a printer that can rapidly switch between different polymer inks or mix them as it prints a single object This means objects can be printed with both flexible and rigid parts.
Lewis has spun off previous work on multi-material printers into a firm called Voxel8, a start-up in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her multi-material printer could help with the athletics wear that Voxel8 is developing, says Lewis. Wearable devices need to be flexible around joints while also having rigid parts to house electronics. And in March , a team led by Jerry Qi, a materials engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, unveiled a four-in-one printer.
This combines a nozzle that extrudes molten polymer with one that prints light-sensitive resin, ready to be cured by ultraviolet lamps or lasers, and two that print wires and circuitry from tiny dots of metal The print heads work together to make integrated devices with circuits embedded on a rigid board or inside a flexible polymer enclosure. Qi says his group is now collaborating with electronics companies interested in printing circuit-board prototypes faster than conventional methods.
For now, sophisticated printers are too expensive to appeal to non-specialists. But 3D printing has come a long way in the past 20 years. Todd remembers people touring his lab in the early s to see his technique to fuse specks of metal dust together to grow parts. Compared with the conventional milling machines and metal-cutting systems in neighbouring labs, his 3D-printing machines struck visitors as a complete oddity.
Now, for many firms, that trick is standard practice. Correction 07 February : An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that Relativity Space intended to do a test launch this year, and misstated the timeline for the development of the printing technique that forms a 3D object in a spinning resin. Walker, D. Science , — PubMed Article Google Scholar. Hull, C. Apparatus for production of three-dimensional objects by stereolithography.
US patent A Tumbleston, J. Kelly, B. Loterie, D. Wang, Y. Nature Mater. Zhang, D. Nature , 91—95 Chen, T. Natl Acad. USA , — Jackson, J.
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