Essentium’s latest survey: what is the future of industrial 3D printing?

The study from Dimensional Research, sponsored by Essentium looks into the practical experiences of stakeholders who have invested into 3D printing for manufacturing, beyond simple prototyping. Although the 3D technology has a tremendous potential, the industry has been rather slow at adopting the technology for mass-production. The study from Dimensional Research gathers data on the current uses and scale of 3D printing and also tries to examine the current challenges to mass adoption. The report is based on an online survey of 114 stakeholders responsible for decisions regarding 3D printing for production parts beyond simple prototyping.

Key Findings

As we mentioned above, the survey finds that 3D printing has a wide range of uses but scale remains the limiting factor. 83% of respondents responded that their largest production run was only in the hundreds of parts or less. However, this statistic is expected to change, as 3D printing for production parts should grow dramatically. More precisely, 100% of respondents see benefits in using 3D printing for large-scale production manufacturing and 99% confirm that the use of 3D printing will increase over the next 3-5 years. And 57% expect future production runs to be in the thousands of parts.

Source: Dimensional Research

Just like the report from 3D Hubs we covered recently, simple prototyping is the most current use of 3D printing but this could change in the years to come.