Wohlers Associates

Wohlers Report 2012

Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing State of the Industry
Annual Worldwide Progress Report ISBN 0-9754429-8-8

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Acknowledgments
About the principal authors

Focus of this report
Introduction to additive manufacturing and 3D printing
History of additive manufacturing
- May 2011 through October 2011
- November 2011 to May 2012
Industries and regions benefiting from AM processes
- How companies are applying AM processes
- Installations by country

Arcam
Asiga
Bits from Bytes
Concept Laser
Delta Micro Factory Corp.
DWS
Envisiontec
EOS
- Metal materials and process
- Polymer materials and process
- DMLS molds
- New developments
Essential Dynamics
ExOne
Fab@Home
Fabbster
Fabrisonic
Irepa Laser
MakerBot Industries
Matsuura
Mcor
Objet
- Merger with Stratasys
- New Connex printer
- New materials
Optomec
Phenix Systems
POM
ReaLizer
Renishaw plc
RepRap
- Machine improvements
- Materials
- Standalone RepRap printers
- Moving to production lines
Sciaky
SLM Solutions
Solidscape
Stratasys
- Merger with Objet
- New Mojo printer
- Other developments
3D Systems
- Acquisitions
- New products
- Personal, professional, and production 3D printers
- Other business
Voxeljet
Emerging developments
- High speed sintering
- Ion fusion formation
- Printoptical technology
- Selective laser printing
- Sintermask

Changing the way you manufacture
Why use AM for production?
- Customer satisfaction
- Reduction of tooling
- Part consolidation
- Part quality
- Industry standards
Design for additive manufacturing
- A new way of thinking
- Consumer design
Cost analysis and economics
Environmental considerations
- Design freedom
- Raw material use
- Sustainability implications
- Distribution and logistics
- Consumer and home production
- Disposal and recycling
- Environmental assessment tools
- Looking ahead
Intellectural property implications
- Limited applicability of IP
- Contributory liability for patent infringement
- Increased importantce of trademark
- Coming to terms with copyright
Product liability implications
Required research and development
- Processes
- Materials and related considerations
- Organization, management, and supply chain issues

CAD solid modeling
- PTC replacement for Pro/Engineer progresses slowly
- GrabCAD creates a design community
- Digital thread makes interoperability inroads
- CAD/PLM revenues return to pre-recession levels
- Seat count estimates more art than science
3D scanning and reverse engineering
- 3D-scanning applications
- 3D-scanning hardware
- Hardware limitations
- Processing software
Co-design/co-creation
3D content and on-demand services
AM software tools
- STL/AMF file review and repair
- Lattice structures
- KARMA
Post-processing
- Removing material
- Adding material
- Changing material properties
- Options that work for AM
- Non-technical post-processing

Patents
Technology development
Consortia and collaborations
- Additive Manufacturing Consortium
- Direct Manufacturing Research Center
- National Network for Manufacturing Innovation
- U.S. government interagency group
- ASTM International Committee F42
- RapidTech and MatEd
U.S. government-sponsored R&D
- National Science Foundation
- Tools needed to enable new AM business models
- Meso, micro, and nano scale technology
- Basic research on existing AM technology
- Educational research
- National Institutes of Health
- Department of Defense
- Department of Energy
Academic activities and capabilities
- AM educational activities
- Research innovations
- Institutions with AM capabilities
- Future trends and contributions