We speculated the other day regarding Stratasys’ lack of metal 3D printing capability and suggested that they have been raising money to execute a major corporate acquisition to put that missing tech in their portfolio. Several spy reports seem to confirm this type of acquisition is in the works.
But who will they acquire?
One choice might be Arcam. They’re a Swedish company that produces a line of “EBM” 3D printers. EBM is their patented 3D metal printing process, standing for “Electron Beam Melting”. You can imagine how that works.
Their line of heavy-duty industrial metal 3D printers we think would complement Stratasys’ existing plastic printers quite well. While Stratasys has experimented with some combination 3D printed plastic and metal items in the past, they do not yet offer a true metal 3D printer.
Another reason to suspect Arcam could be acquired is that they recently went public and have begun trading their stock. Anyone could buy their stock, even Stratasys.
On the other hand, there are other metal 3D printing companies, including ExOne, who, like Arcam, publicly trade stock. ExOne offers 3D printing in not only metal, but also glass and sand (for casting metal).
