Metal AM market

Welcome to lecture of AM markets. My name is Heidi Piili. This lecture takes an overview to the latest developments in additive manufacturing. If we have a look to the unit sales in additive manufacturing by the means of 3D printer sales globally. According to the latest report of Wholers Annual Report, you can see that there has been a large growth since 2016. Between 2016 and 2017 the growth was largest, but you can also see that growth of unit sales has remained after then quite stable. The difference between 2018 and 2019 was not that huge.

The difference between sales in 2016 and 2017 can be explained by the fact that cheap consumer printers – not consumer printers but cheaper metal printers came into the market. And by the cheap, not really consumer but cheap metal 3D printers here means printers based on material extrusion and these technologies were introduced in a separate lecture. We can also see that annual sales growth of metal 3D printers in percentage was highest in 2017. After that the sales has been quite stable. But, if we have a look to the metal materials which can be 3D printed and their sales globally, we can see that the increase has been in a growing trend since 2016.

Even though there was not that huge increase and change between 2018 and 2019, we can still see that the amount of metal materials and the sales of that has been increasing.