E3D is going deep with upgrades for popular desktop 3D printers.
The UK-based company is well-known for its line of robust hot ends and extruders, producing high-quality components for many years. However, a recent visit with them shows they seem to be adjusting their strategic focus.
The company’s flagship product is their Revo product line. This is a highly sophisticated hot end design for FFF 3D printers that provides a number of very useful features, including color identification, low power usage, and an ability to easily swap nozzles by hand.
Those are features that are highly desirable for those building their own desktop FFF 3D printer. In fact, that was a key market for E3D and other component makers in years past. If you were building a machine, you’d need components to do so, and E3D was one of the best places to get them. They still are.
But times have changed. Today, if you go to the E3D website, you’ll see a very strong focus on 3D printer brands. In fact, the site seems to be designed around the assumption that the visitor owns a Bambu Lab, Prusa, or Creality machine.
They offer upgraded components for each of these and a few other platforms. However, the three mentioned are far more prominent on the site.
That suggests that the company has found their main market: upgrading popular brands. That’s a very good strategy because fewer people build their own 3D printers these days, and the number of people who just buy a machine is vastly greater.
In a study published earlier this year, CONTEXT revealed the proportions of the market for the major brands. They found that 94% of the desktop 3D printer shipments were from Creality, Bambu Lab, Anycubic, and Elegoo. That leaves only six percent for everyone else, including Prusa Research.
The shipments from those four companies no doubt represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of machines. That’s why E3D is focusing so strongly on companies like Bambu Labs.
Why have a Prusa product at all? I suspect it has to do with momentum. Several years ago, Prusa Research was at the top of the heap, and it made sense for E3D and others to focus on that platform. They have carried that forward to today. However, with the statistics above, it would seem that E3D might want to add Anycubic and Elegoo compatibility to their product line.
That all said, E3D continues to grow their product line in the plug-compatible direction. For example, their most recent product is a new Bambu Lab-compatible ObXidian nozzle, which has both high flow and high temperature properties. E3D told us this hot end provides 60% more material flow.
This is what we’ll likely see from E3D as the future unfolds: increasingly powerful upgrades for the most popular desktop 3D printers. While they will no doubt continue to sell the “standalone” products, I expect that will never become their main source of revenue.
Via E3D
