The business of making 3D printers is consolidating
By P.M.
CONSOLIDATION in the 3D-printing business continues as the big companies in the industry aim to provide services and products that cover the entire field—from desktop printers for consumers to industrial “additive-manufacturing” machines.
Stratasys, based in Minneapolis (and which itself merged with Israel-based Objet last year), has now bought Brooklyn’s MakerBot, the leader in bringing 3D printers to the consumer market. MakerBot has sold more than 22,000 MakerBots since it was founded in 2009. Its new Replicator 2 (pictured) has accounted for half those sales in the past nine months.
Stratasys reckons desktop 3D printers will become a mainstay of the business. MakerBot also comes with thingiverse.com, a website that is used by many in the maker movement as a repository for CAD designs, which can be downloaded and fed into the printers. The firm’s other assets include software and plans to bring out a desktop 3D scanner. Moreover, although MakerBots’s printers might be seen as entry-level machines, they are often used in corporate R&D labs—even some of the biggest.
3D Systems, based in South Carolina, is America’s other market leader in additive manufacturing. It recently bought an 80% stake in Phenix Systems, a French provider of direct-metal selective laser sintering. These machines print metal parts by fusing powder with a laser. American companies lead in printing systems that make things in all kinds of industrial plastics, but direct-metal printing has remained something of a European speciality. One of the leaders is EOS of Germany.
Phenix Systems makes printers that can produce things in ceramics and metals ranging from stainless steel and superalloys to precious metals and aluminium. Most of its machines can be found in companies that make aeroplanes, cars and medical devices, which are customised for individual patients. Whether at the consumer end of the market or the industrial one, 3D printing is clearly getting serious.
