A Glimmer of Light: Navigating 3D Printing’s Opportunities and Challenges

Technology, products, and applications are all at the critical point of significant breakthroughs, and the industry is on the eve of an explosive growth period.

                                                ——UnionTech General Manager Ma Jingsong

On December 19, 2024, UnionTech General Manager Mr. Ma Jingsong delivered a keynote speech titled "A Glimmer of Light - Navigating 3D Printing's Opportunities and Challenges" at the 2024 Additive Manufacturing Industry Development Forum and Annual Conference. He provided an in-depth explanation of the digital manufacturing essence of 3D printing technology, the current stage of industry development, and future opportunities and challenges.

Rethinking 3D Printing

3D printing is a new type of digital manufacturing technology. In the past, 3D printing technology has been labeled with various tags, such as "complex structures," "personalization," "prototype models," etc. However, there has been a lack of clear understanding of whether 3D printing technology is worth long-term investment. Mr. Ma Jingsong believes that 3D printing technology is the third type of manufacturing technology, a typical new quality of productive forces, and an essential technology for the future of intelligent manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is a technology that uses data to drive the entire production process. Therefore, in terms of manufacturing granularity and depth, 3D printing technology surpasses both material-equal manufacturing and material-reduction manufacturing in terms of data-driven production characteristics.

The technical value of 3D printing is limitless. From a technical value perspective, 3D printing technology removes three constraints in terms of cost and process: structural, quantity, and capacity constraints. Moreover, it also meets the future development requirements of manufacturing in terms of environmental protection and carbon reduction.

1. 3D printing can remove structural constraints, adopting flexible production and design innovation, allowing the manufacture of any complex three-dimensional entities, and releasing productivity to the greatest extent to liberate product design and innovation freedom.

2. 3D printing can remove quantity constraints, producing on demand, and removing the strong coupling relationship between single-piece cost and production quantity, product complexity in standardized mass production. This characteristic gives unparalleled production advantages in small-batch scenarios.

3. 3D printing can remove capacity constraints, avoiding excess capacity. It has strong production adaptability, without complex and heavy production preparation processes, fully automated processes, and can switch between producing different categories and quantities of products in the capacity system at will.

3D printing can digitize manufacturing processes, with CAD/CAPP/CAM fully integrated, design and manufacturing integrated, seamless connection, and manufacturing capabilities with strong replicability and extremely low marginal costs. 3D printing technology can achieve environmental protection and carbon reduction, save materials, and significantly simplify and reduce production processes. On-demand production can avoid the cost waste of inventory in the pre-production stage, driving production based on demand, fundamentally solving the economic problem of overproduction.

Typical Applications of Additive Manufacturing Technology

Mr. Ma Jingsong believes that the consensus in the industry is that additive manufacturing technology is developing from prototype manufacturing to real production. The current technological penetration rate to manufacturing is less than 0.1%, which is also the internal driving force for the industry's continuous development.

Typical Applications of Additive Manufacturing Technology

Prototype Verification

The technological substitution advantages of 3D printing technology in the field of prototype sampling are widely recognized and have been fully applied by the market. At the same time, the market maturity is high, the business is more dispersed, the industry concentration is low, the technical professionalism requirements are low, the cost sensitivity is high, market competition is intensifying, and the growth rate is slowing down. Most commercial cases are still concentrated at this level, mainly used for concept verification and product development processes.

Process & Fixtures

3D printing technology has developed from the prototype manufacturing stage to the process stage. The process stage has a high industry concentration, high technical professionalism requirements, high cost sensitivity, and is generally in the 1-100 stage. The penetration of 3D printing in the manufacturing field is less than one ten-thousandth. Applications in industries such as dentistry (orthodontics, restoration, and implantation) and shoemaking are also more widespread, with high market maturity and strong competition, and growth has encountered certain bottlenecks. However, new application scenarios still need to be developed, explored, and discovered.

Real Production

That is, the "ultimate goal" of the industry, using 3D printing to directly produce finished products. The industry has high professionalism and verticality, requires a lot of process technology support, has high technical barriers and market premiums, is easy to achieve market concentration, is generally in the 0-1 stage, has great growth potential, and is a blue ocean market. In this field, metal applications have taken the lead in aerospace, and non-metal materials still face challenges in technical specifications and demand matching, but have great potential.

Metal 3D printing technology has taken the lead in achieving large-scale manufacturing application scenarios in the aerospace field. Metal printing has entered the real manufacturing scenario in aerospace and military, and the application scenarios have been widely proven and popularized. From design to pre-research, batch production, and later maintenance, the technical advantages of metal printing are prominent throughout the entire life cycle of parts, achieving great success. In the 3C application field, new technologies and new application demands have been awakened, accelerating diffusion.

From a global market scale perspective, non-metal printing applications are more extensive, and the market share is higher. According to Wohlers Associates data, in 2021, the global industrial-grade 3D printer shipments exceeded 260,000 units, and the raw material value exceeded 2.5 billion US dollars, with polymer equipment and materials accounting for 91% and 82%, respectively.

In some application scenarios, non-metal printing small-batch manufacturing has become the norm; in some civilian fields, it has been productized and has a trend of expansion, but the market volume and social impact are not significant: mainly SLA and FDM technologies in the cultural and creative market, DLP technology in the shoe industry, and SLS technology in some industrial product parts. However, the technical challenges and difficulties faced by the non-metal 3D printing field are still huge, especially in terms of materials and technology.

3D Printing Industry Status and Growth Potential

With the improvement of technological maturity and the acceptance of downstream users, Mr. Ma Jingsong believes that 3D printing is gradually crossing the "death valley" between the growth period and the explosive period. As long as more industry scenarios break the ice, new growth momentum will emerge.

1. Breakthroughs in metal 3D printing application scenarios have brought a positive demonstration effect.

Metal 3D printing, due to breakthroughs in aerospace and 3C electronics fields, has awakened new technologies and new application demands. The social and economic benefits brought by the breakthrough of an application scenario are obvious, and non-metal faces relatively large challenges and urgency. The additive manufacturing industry is facing a turning point that is about to enter an explosive period.

2. Non-metal printing has made significant breakthroughs in material innovation.

UnionTech has launched a new high-performance material developed by its material subsidiary, Sinstic: Temp-R220 high-temperature material. The new upgrade of materials has brought more vitality and momentum to technological innovation and industry development.

Temp-R220 High-Temperature Material

This material has a heat deformation temperature exceeding 220℃, a long-term use temperature > 250℃, and has excellent strength and certain toughness. It is also suitable for large-format SLA design and manufacturing, has good stability in complex environments, reliable precision, and excellent surface quality. Since this type of material is widely used in fields such as aerospace, there are more stringent requirements for precision, and Temp-R220 has a new upgrade in size precision, which can easily undertake the printing of small and fine structures and micro-channels.

3. A single spark can start a prairie fire.

Under the effect of market coercion, various technologies and processes in the entire industry are actively trying errors in scene adaptation, with increasing frequency and density, and the industry development is gradually returning to the rational origin.

4. The rise of AI.

The digital wave is coming, and the global digital trend is irreversible. The addition of AI and other technologies has injected new momentum into the development of 3D printing. AI is becoming more mature in technology applications, which will greatly promote additive manufacturing, whether in design or technology process optimization.

One-stop Additive Manufacturing Software-UT ONE

Challenges in the Development of Additive Manufacturing

The challenges in the development of the additive manufacturing industry mainly remain at the technical level. For the additive manufacturing industry to achieve mass production, it is necessary to meet the requirements of manufacturing standards. Industrial engineering actual quantitative requirements, 3D printing quality industrial requirements, and its technical breakthroughs and innovations are mainly reflected in material innovation, structural innovation, and process innovation.

Mr. Ma Jingsong believes that in the technical level of the additive manufacturing industry, manufacturing adaptability is insufficient, such as material performance matching, cost, efficiency, manufacturing consistency, etc., and is still in a stage that cannot fully match the demand market. As a leader in the additive manufacturing industry, UnionTech needs to drive the entire industry to be based on in-depth mining of application scenarios, forcing rapid progress in industry technology.

In terms of demand docking, there is a significant difference in technical cognition between supply and demand, and the internal driving force of application demand is insufficient, with spontaneous or accidental characteristics being more obvious, and scattered and messy demand docking lacks an industry coordination mechanism. The main challenges we face are to strengthen the understanding and mastery of each other's technical requirements and advantages between supply and demand, systematically sort out the demands according to the principle of depth, dock and solve them one by one, and implement them in a distributed manner.

In terms of design, product design still follows the ideas and habits of standardized mass production, and the design and manufacturing path of 3D printing has not received enough theoretical support and application practice proof. The industry urgently needs to strengthen the establishment of corresponding standards and the maturity of design tools.

Mr. Ma Jingsong uses "a glimmer of light" to metaphor the status of 3D printing technology

Talking about the vision and future outlook of industrial regression and distributed manufacturing, Mr. Ma Jingsong regards 3D printing technology as a higher-dimensional "manufacturing regression."

1. The industrial revolution has promoted large-scale standardized production, which has also brought about overcapacity and market homogenization.

2. 3D printing, through digital empowerment, gives end-users more choices, promoting the production model to return to small batches and multiple categories.

3. Distributed manufacturing has also become a realistic path. By quickly distributing CAD data, the far end can use 3D printing equipment to accurately restore production capacity, forming a global collaboration of productivity and local landing.

Mr. Ma Jingsong uses "a glimmer of light" to metaphor the status of 3D printing technology facing huge opportunities and challenges: "The innovative power represented by 3D printing still needs more technical accumulation and industry chain collaboration, but as long as effective breakthroughs are formed in some important application fields, it will illuminate more industry scenarios like a light gap, leading to breakthroughs and leaps, and leading the revolution of future manufacturing."

3D printing is like a glimmer of light, bursting into a new life for the industry. Under the demonstration effect of metal printing application breakthroughs and market coercion, relying on the rise of AI, as well as the penetration of the digital wave in the consumer end, more and more manufacturing enterprises will actively embrace 3D printing technology to help the renewal of the consumer market and transaction efficiency. UnionTech will continue to take 3D printing as the main technical carrier, through continuous technological innovation and application innovation, to build a high delivery capability of digital manufacturing in small-batch scenarios, and achieve the replicability, transferability, and connectivity of this capability.

The mission of a glimmer of light: because we believe, so we see. As the concluding remark, Mr. Ma Jingsong expressed his firm belief in the industry's future: "Many people need to see before they believe, but we must believe in this trend first, before we can see the future."