The Metal 3D Printing Technology Report: Chapter 7: Future Outlook and Emerging Trends
The seventh chapter of the Wevolver Metal AM Report explores the evolving metal additive manufacturing market, projecting a significant growth with a 29% CAGR by 2028 and focusing on key trends including Process Integration, Sustainable Practices, and Accessibility.
15 Jan, 2025. 8 min read
Image credit: Emiel Noorlander and Xometry
Understand the Future of Metal 3D Printing
The Metal 3D Printing Technology Report is your essential guide to the latest advances, applications, and real-world insights into additive manufacturing with metal. Packed with detailed case studies, practical information, and interviews with industry leaders, this report reveals how metal 3D printing is transforming industries and pushing the boundaries of manufacturing.
Read the intro to the report here and an excerpt from chapter 7 below.
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Overall, the metal AM market continues to grow, with some projections citing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the range of 29% between now and 2028. This growth is also accompanied by the continued evolution of metal additive manufacturing technologies and the metal AM market, with maturation being pursued in the aim of greater efficiency, consistency, integration, automation, and capabilities. This chapter, the final chapter in the Wevolver Metal AM Report, will take a granular look at the trends identifiable across the metal AM market to better understand where Metal AM is headed in the near term and long term. Specifically, this chapter will cover three key trends: Process Integration, Sustainable Practices, and Accessibility.
Process Integration
Process integration remains top of mind for metal AM solutions providers and end users, and for good reason. Many of the bottlenecks and hurdles experienced in metal AM production are related to siloed processes and the reliance on manual interventions in between production stages. Ultimately, greater process integration across the metal AM workflow for both hardware and software, will create more efficiency and make metal AM more industrially viable.
Process integration encompasses the integration of metal 3D printing technologies with upstream and downstream processes for a seamless end-to-end production chain. Generally, the process chain can be broken down into the following steps: Design, Pre-Processing, 3D Printing, Post-Processing, and Quality Assurance. While these steps provide a helpful framework to understand what goes into the metal AM process, they may be slightly reductive, as each of these steps is composed of many elements, and certain metal AM processes also require parallel processes, such as material supply management solutions.
There are many ways that process integration is being pursued across the aforementioned steps. For example, the AM design process could be further integrated with advanced simulation and optimization tools, so that part designs are manufacturable from the outset, thus simplifying the pre-processing stage. "The goal is to move towards a more software-driven design approach, where predictive analysis and digital twins become standard in the industry," explains Greg Paulsen, Director of Application Engineering, Xometry.
That view—that design should not be a standalone exercise but something informed by the machinery and its processes—is echoed by Guy Brown, R&D Lead at Aibuild, who stresses the importance of “integrating Design for Additive Manufacturing with slicing and process monitoring.” By doing things separately, he explains, “there’s a lot of synergy you’re missing out on.”
Furthermore, the advancement and integration of in-process monitoring in the printing stage will dramatically streamline the AM production chain. There are several efforts underway to develop AI-driven in-situ monitoring systems capable of not only monitoring the AM process in real-time, but also of detecting and even predicting inconsistencies in the metal AM printing process. The advent of these sophisticated systems will ensure process quality and support the integration of quality assurance.
Greater automation in metal AM post-processing is also key to achieving greater process integration. Metal AM post-processing remains a key bottleneck in metal AM production, as it can involve several steps, many of which—like support removal—are largely reliant on manual interventions. Automated solutions powered by AI can therefore streamline this critical production step and usher in new levels of efficiency.
Ultimately, the incorporation of digital thread technology and AI aims to enhance process controls, quality assurance, traceability, and part optimization across the metal AM production process, paving the way for more autonomous production systems.
Sustainable Practices
Achieving greater sustainability in terms of processes and materials is a major goal not only in metal additive manufacturing but also in the broader manufacturing industry. When we talk about sustainability and metal AM there is a tendency to focus on how the technology can enable greater sustainability in the following ways:
Minimized raw material consumption through net-shaped part production or near-net-shaped part production
Production of more fuel-efficient and lightweight parts for aircraft and automobiles
Localized, on-demand production for reduced inventories, logistics, and transport emissions
However, when we look at the trend of sustainability in metal AM there is also the question of increasing the efficiency and minimizing the carbon footprint of the production process itself through process optimization and the establishment of more sustainable material supply chains.
In the metal AM industry, many sustainability efforts are related to metal materials and metal powders in particular. According to an AM sustainability report, the raw material production process has the most significant impact on the overall carbon footprint of metal AM. For metal powders, this supply chain involves many energy-intensive steps, including extraction, melting, billot forming, atomization, classification, storage, and transport. Fortunately, it is possible to use scrap metal as a base for metal AM powders, however it requires high-quality scrap metal and certification processes. 6K Additive is among the metal powder suppliers placing a distinct emphasis on sustainability, having developed a technology capable of producing high-grade metal powders for AM from recycled metal. In a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of its Nickel alloy powder, the company found dramatic increases in sustainability, with reductions in energy consumption of 91% and emissions of 91.5%.
Producing metal AM feedstocks from scrap is only part of the equation: the ability to recycle a higher ratio of unused metal feedstocks is also vital to unlocking greater sustainability for AM processes. While it has traditionally been challenging to reuse metal powders (particularly reactive metals) that have been exposed to the metal AM process due to the risks of contamination and degradation, there have been advances in the processing of used (but unsintered) metal AM powders and their integration into new powder feedstocks. Higher ratios of used powder can increase the sustainability of powder-based metal AM processes.
Emerging metal additive manufacturing processes like metal binder jetting and metal extrusion also offer a smaller ecological impact than powder bed fusion technologies. In the case of binder jetting, which uses powder feedstocks, the smaller footprint is due to a couple of factors, including that metal binder jetting does not use high-power energy sources and high temperatures (parts must, however, must undergo sintering, but this can be done in batches for greater efficiency), and the material reuse rate is significant: with metal powders being recycled up to 16 times for a material consumption efficiency of up to 96%.
From another angle, greater optimization of the metal AM process chain, with more powerful simulations and in-situ process monitoring, can also increase the sustainability of metal AM by reducing the risk of failed print jobs. Additionally, the carbon footprint of metal AM processes can be mitigated by AM companies and OEMs increasingly turning to renewable energy sources to power their production operations.
Finally, AM processes like DED have the potential to extend the lifespan of existing metal parts like injection molds by enabling rapid repair. Guy Brown, Head of R&D at Aibuild, believes such workflows are significantly more sustainable than traditional strategies of replacing damaged metal parts: “If you compare the environmental impact of just depositing around 10 cubic centimeters of material and then machining it, versus chucking away the whole injection mold tool and getting another one, that’s a lot of carbon that doesn’t need to be used and a lot of mining that doesn't have to be done.”
Accessibility
A continuing trend in the metal AM industry is centered on driving accessibility to the technology. This trend has many facets, including making the technology and materials more affordable, decreasing the learning curve and technical requirements for operating metal AM, establishing economically valuable applications for new adopters, and facilitating entry points to the technology through widespread services and distribution networks.
On the cost front, currently expensive processes like LPBF and DED will become more accessible as powder management and recycling advances and as AM powders are manufactured in greater quantities, triggering economies of scale. Increasing automation, particularly in post-processes, will also contribute to lower costs down the line through the reduction of manual labor. Emerging metal AM technologies like metal extrusion and binder jetting are also paving the way for more cost-accessible metal part production, offering the benefits of design freedom and part customization at a lower price point due to the nature of the material feedstocks and the processes themselves.
Flattening the learning curve for metal additive manufacturing design and operation will also help to increase access. This aspect of accessibility is being addressed through the development of more user-friendly and intuitive software for part design, pre-processing, and printing that will make it easier for non-experts to make use of the technology and reap its benefits. Additionally, establishing more widespread and accessible training programs for AM design and processes will help the manufacturing technology to proliferate beyond the bounds of advanced manufacturing specialists. Integrating 3D printing into education from an early age can also ultimately help to increase access to industrial metal AM in the long term.
“Working on desktop printers, programming slicer software, and actually watching the machine and how it prints are so invaluable,” says Matthew Shmidt, Senior Technical Sales Engineer, Xometry. “Young engineers are learning how the construction of these printers work by pushing the limits of those small printers, and eventually scaling up and creating with bigger, more complex machines. There's more learning to do but starting small scale and failing fast will set you on the right path to take advantage of additive in the future.”
Finally, a flourishing industry of metal AM services will help to expand access to metal 3D printing, particularly for SMEs who may not have the resources to invest in their own in-house equipment. These manufacturing services, which provide prototyping, small-batch production, custom part production, and even series production, not only offer access to metal 3D printing hardware and post-processing, but also to a team of experts who can support the delivery of successful builds. Production services themselves can make the procurement process for end users more accessible and streamlined through the use of AI-driven instant quotes and intelligent RFQ systems.
Read an excerpt from the chapters here:
Introduction Chapter
The Metal 3D Printing Technology Report is your essential guide to the latest advances, applications, and real-world insights into additive manufacturing with metal.
In the first chapter of our new report, we examine the dominant methods of metal 3D printing—metal laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), directed energy deposition (DED), metal extrusion, and binder jetting—as well as other still-emerging or more niche processes.
The metal additive manufacturing market features various feedstock types, with powder being the dominant choice for LPBF, some DED methods, and binder jetting. Metal wire and bound metal filament are also used in specific technologies.
In this chapter, we separate metal AM post-processing into four categories: debinding and sintering, CNC machining and milling, heat treatment, and quality assurance.
Metal 3D printing offers significant design opportunities with its high geometrical freedom, but it requires careful design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) to address equipment and material constraints, a process supported by DfAM and 3D printing simulation tools in most major CAD software.
This chapter of the report will lay out and examine the various applications of metal additive manufacturing, with a particular focus on end-use applications in the dominant metal AM adoption industries.
Chapter 7
