Metal powder based additive manufacturing technologies-business forecast

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM), a layer-wise manufacturing technique using CAD model and raw material as input poses new challenges to conventional manufacturing. Without any efforts required for material removal and tooling, the product build time and material consumption can be controlled and estimated effectively with high accuracy and quality. Further, AM has the necessary capability of manufacturing products as per their final dimensional and functional needs in one operation thereby cutting down the subsequent finishing and assembling steps. AM thus reduces total time for product manufacturing simultaneously eliminating capital and operational costs for further steps, inventory and material handling. However, process and material challenges are the techno-economic barriers for adapting AM in industries for commercialization. The paper has specifically chosen metal powders for analysis as their properties and process capabilities are better than non-metals. The data collected on the present status of the AM technologies globally (related to the sale of 3D printers both in numbers and revenues) based on the various reports are analysed to forecast market of 3D printers for the next 10 years. Final conclusions are made by predicting the values using regression technique. The paper analyses the global patent trends during last 15 years in various countries so as to assess the futuristic AM technologies.