Materialise CEO Brigitte de Vet-Veithen listed her thoughts on the trends in additive manufacturing.
Materialise provides advanced software and services for additive manufacturing, with their tools being used by many major operations using AM. de Vet-Veithen today issued a video with her observations on how AM has been changing, and how these shifts may carry into the future.
Let’s go through her points one at a time.
“Today’s economic and geopolitical situation is creating uncertainty worldwide. Global supply chains are under pressure, forcing companies to apply short-term thinking and adapt rapidly. Interestingly, the world’s uncertainty is building more certainty in AM. As our traditional approaches are shaken, AM’s value becomes clearer than ever — for resilience, flexibility, and shorter, controlled supply chains.”
This is absolutely true. We’ve seen multiple companies shift their market focus toward new military applications, which just happen to be ideal for AM technology. For example, drone production, and particularly rapid prototyping, is a near perfect application for the technology. Similarly, aerospace applications, including missiles, aircraft and mobile platforms all require lower weight solutions, and again that is an ideal application for AM.
“A powerful, second accelerator towards scaling is AM’s entry into the mainstream. Increasingly, this transformation is taking place within manufacturing companies themselves, thanks to the growing availability of compact, affordable, and high-quality FDM printers.”
We’ve observed this as well. Seeing the progress of desktop 3D printers from flaky hobby devices years ago to today’s systems that are, in every sense of the word, professional systems, has been astonishing. These systems are far more accessible due to their low price and ease of use design, and that’s generating huge demand worldwide.
As de Vet-Veithen explained, these systems are increasingly being used in academic situations, meaning students are much more exposed to the technology than ever before. That, she believes, will lead to more use of the technology as students mature into industry practitioners.
In addition, these low cost systems are increasingly being used as true manufacturing platforms through the use of print farms. There are now print farms with thousands of 3D printers, able to produce massive quantities of parts on demand — all without the need for tooling.
de Vet-Veithen concludes with:
”All these trends illustrate why now is the right time for AM to scale faster than ever while truly making an impact. AM’s move into the mainstream sparks a partnership dynamic — in‑house innovation complemented by deep expertise from the outside. This is the turning point towards smarter, faster, and more flexible manufacturing. And it starts now.”
We agree. Let’s get to work.
Via Materialise
