3D printing: new development pattern in 2016

If you use one sentence to summarize the domestic 3D printing industry in 2015, what would you say? 3D printing industry insiders describe it like this: On the road to success, the scenery is so bad that people just want to talk dirty. Yes, for 3D printing, our dreams and expectations are very beautiful, but the reality is quite cruel.

In 2015, 3D printing has achieved many excellent results. So, what is the new development pattern of 3D printing in 2016?

Related policies are gradually exerting force

The policy that many people have been worried about is lagging behind the drawbacks of industrial development, and it has not appeared in the 3D printing industry. On the contrary, the enthusiasm for 3D printing at the national level gradually unfolded in 2015.

First of all, in February at the beginning of the year, the “National Additive Manufacturing Industry Development Promotion Plan (2015-2016)” was released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, indicating that the development of the industry has received attention. The plan predicts that by 2016, a relatively complete additive manufacturing industry system will be initially established, and the overall technological level will be kept in step with the international level, reaching the international advanced level in direct manufacturing fields such as aerospace, and occupying a large market share in the international market.

Among the many emerging technologies, the only technology that can process materials in a true sense and turn materials into parts is 3D printing. Although there are certain deviations between the areas covered in the plan and the products currently popular in the market, the government and the market do not have exactly the same concerns. In fact, it is exactly the result required by the development of the industry. The government is concerned about “high and big”, and the market prefers “short and fast.”

Professor Yan Yongnian of Tsinghua University believes that the current domestic 3D printing industry applications and development are mainly concentrated in the aviation field and defense industry.

The biggest good news for the 3D printing industry came from the release of “Made in China 2025” on May 19, which laid the foundation for the industry’s official rise as a national strategy. In this planning document related to the development of China’s manufacturing industry in the next 10 years or more, Kai Zong clearly stated that the global manufacturing landscape is facing major adjustments, and countries are increasing scientific and technological innovation, promoting three-dimensional (3D) printing, New breakthroughs have been made in the fields of mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, bioengineering, new energy, and new materials. In all industries, 3D printing is the first point of attention.

Joe Ellison wrote in his book “The Impact of 3D Printing on the Manufacturing Industry”: “Today, 3D printing is still regarded as a technical solution, but the future of 3D printing will be a commercial Solution.” From this point of view, 3D printing is only just beginning in 2015. In the future, 3D printing will exert greater value.

3D printing still lacks iconic products

The result of the policy effort will take time to gradually reveal itself, and to make the industry get more attention and investment, what 3D printing needs more is a landmark product that can make people’s eyes shine.

The development of the industry requires the emergence of representative products in order to attract more attention and capital investment in this field, just like Apple is to smartphones and Tesla is to electric vehicles. Obviously at this point, 3D printing has so far been Lack of shocking products.

In the past year, the biggest sensation in the field of 3D printing was a machine for making pancakes. Several Tsinghua graduates launched a 3D pancake printer. As long as you enter text or pictures in your computer, you can print out pancakes in various shapes, such as portraits, buildings, and cartoon characters. The project has received 10 million yuan investment from well-known investor Xu Xiaoping.

“This kind of product is not actually a real 3D printer. It is more like a children’s toy and cannot represent the future of the industry.” Some insiders said, but obviously, the emergence of the pancake machine has made 3D printing accepted by more people. , And desktop-level 3D printing provides a lot of convenience for popular application design. With the popularization of 3D printing concepts, there will be good prospects in the future.

But obviously, from the perspective of technological progress and industry development, although such hot products have great power to attract eyeballs, they cannot represent the main direction of future development.

In the 3D printing home base in the United States, at the last moment of the year, the industry giant 3D Systems sent an email to registered users of its consumer-grade online 3D printing market, announcing that it would officially close the market and stop 3D printing in the near future Retail sales of products, such as jewelry and mobile phone cases. This is considered to be a sign of its withdrawal from the “consumer” market and its shift to the more profitable professional and industrial 3D printing market. A more direct statement is actually the need for industrial upgrading.

Luo Jun (CEO of the 3D Printing Technology Industry Alliance) introduced: The domestic 3D printing industry is still in its infancy and does not master original technology. Only a small number of 3D printing companies in China can make small profits, and generally they are not profitable. The United States leads the way in non-metallic 3D printing.

In the future, the industrial field will still be the mainstream market for 3D printing. The industrial application of 3D printing will inevitably become platform, intelligent, and systematized in the future. Therefore, Chinese companies cannot only attract attention, but can focus on technology and materials. It needs to make its own characteristics more down-to-earth.

According to the plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 2-3 companies with strong international competitiveness in additive manufacturing (3D) will be formed in 2016. The combination of 3D printing and robotics (68.500, -1.68, -2.39%), the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and other fields will also be closer, thereby reducing warehousing costs, optimizing supply chain management, and building “smart factories”. “Intelligent production” and the realization of “smart logistics” play a more important role, and the popularization of science, demonstration and promotion, education and training, industrial research and other aspects also need to be completed in 2016.

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