According to Forbes, sales of 3D printers for additive manufacturing in metal grew by over 75% last year as sighted by an original report from Wohlers Associates (3D printing industry analysts). And this significant increase was clearly not just the well publicised scaling up of the Shapeways business to offer 3D printed products in Gold.
3D printers capable of making items in metal are of course much more expensive than consumer machines which are limited to ABS and PLA plastics. Cost wise, high quality 3D printers which use laser sintering for example can cost many tens of thousands of dollars each. Top quality metal printers used by the aerospace industry will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The process of 3D printing in metals from stainless steel, brass, gold or even in tungsten is also more costly and complex. Even if the cost of 3D printing in metal were to come down, there are serious safetey issues attached to doing so in a consumer based setting – it is not likely to happen using the current processes which consume power and generate large amounts of heat.
Increasing sales of 3D printers for metal per annum
The report states in detail that 348 metal printers were sold last year (a 75% increase over 2012). That does not sound like a large number but it is akin in some was to the birth of supercomputers where only a handful existed in the early days. The market for these 3D printers was quite diverse but as expected, buyers came from the medical, dental and aerospace industries. It is not clear whether these figures were global statistics or just limited to the U.S. market.
The headline figure from the report stated that the market for 3D printing products increased by 34.9% last year to $3.07B (€2.25B).
Interestingly, you can gain access to quite a few businesses who will 3D print in metal by consulting the services provided by Makexyz and 3D Hubs.