Hey guys,
Recently an article claiming that “3D Printing was Dying” was floating around the web, causing much dissatisfaction in various groups. Then I found this responce, I think it is worth checking out.
The author of this piece also makes a claim that isn’t supported and shows he’s unfamiliar with how the market works in general.
SSYS didn’t lose value because it’s “losing it’s monopoly”. The stock got hammered because they paid far too much for an underperforming asset that didn’t have near the market that was projected. It cost them a lot of money, returned no value and the stock is paying the price. Stock market 101 type stuff.
The traction in unit numbers is in the sub $5k printer space and the traction for large margins is in the industrial quality machines, particularly those that can make more than plastic parts.
What has died is the myth that there will be a printer in every home and that everyone will be using them for any number of mundane tasks. That was never going to be. While the source your own DIY kit has been replaced in a large part by cheap kits from Shenzhen, the traction is in low cost, complete machines and entry level pro FDM machines like Lulzbot, Ultimaker and others.
Low end additive manufacturing is fine, it’s the unrealistic expectations that are dying.
The original author used a bunch of anecdotes that didn’t prove anything and tied it with a clickbait headline. There were a few good points in there as well, I just wish those points were transmitted earlier in the hype cycle. Makerbot simply offered worse machines than their previous generation at a higher price, with worse service, in a market with declining average sale prices. So any tying of their performance with the overall market is specious at best.
The most egregious fault of John Brandon’s dubious article is the price he quotes for a spool of filament.
Even in Australia we can get filament for around half that price, so it just looks like John Brandon didn’t do even the most basic research.
His article is only worth dismissing as just silly.
Honestly, we ARE post-hype cycle. 3D Printing IS dying, and that’s a good thing. We’re reaching the point where real advancements can be made.
@ThantiK The hype phase is done but the adoption phase is still in full swing. More units of sub $5k machines will be shipped this year than in any previous year. On the curve we are somewhere around the transition of early majority to late majority with regards to low end FDM.
FDM is a mature process. There isn’t going to be much, if any advancement in technology. There will be tweaks in usability, cost reductions due to scale and a streamlining of the toolchain.
The technology advancements are going to be in other processes, particularly metal based processes. At the lower end we’ll see more rapid adoption of SLA with some cost scaling. With SLA a big cost driver right now is the imaging circuitry and the cost of consumables. There are some toolchain issues as well but those will advance as the market scales.