3D Printing Archives

Wohlers Report 2021 Finds 7.5% Growth in Additive Manufacturing Industry Despite Pandemic

Keeping up with technology trends of any type is no easy feat, but maintaining pace with additive manufacturing would be near impossible without the help of the annual industry-leading report on additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing from Wohlers Associates, a TEAMM Coordination Network partner.

In the Wohlers Report 2021, now in its 26th year, is a detailed look at the trends, perspectives, and forecasts that executives and educators find essential for decision making, education, and knowledge acceleration. The report gives readers new to AM a comprehensive understanding of the technology and industry. Veterans of the technology benefit from up-to-date information on growth, recent trends, and important developments worldwide.

This year’s 375-page report discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the AM industry. Even with the pandemic, Wohlers Associates found industry expansion of 7.5 percent to nearly $12.8 billion in 2020. Growth was down considerably, compared to average growth of 27.4% over the previous 10 years.

Most established manufacturers of AM systems saw a decline in equipment sales, but many less-established companies grew in 2020. An increase in business by AM service providers supported industry wide growth. The following chart shows 7.1% growth from independent service providers worldwide, resulting in nearly $5.3 billion of revenue from this group.

Dr. Ismail Fidan, Professor in Manufacturing and Engineering Technology at Tennessee Tech University, is an associate author of Wohlers Report 2021. He focuses on Academic activities and capabilities, and in the section, he highlights the work of over 130 institutions and 15 research institutes, some examples:

“Somerset Community College in Kentucky initiated a new AM project called the Rapid Response Additive Manufacturing Initiative (RRAMI). It involved a statewide rapid response network capable of manufacturing critical supplies in the event of future emergencies.” We shared an RRAMI update on LinkedIn related to our AM News social media efforts.
“Five Louisiana universities have been awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to transform AM research and education in Louisiana.”
“The National Institute of Standards and Technology awarded nearly 4 million to Georgia Tech, the University of Texas at El Paso, Purdue University, and Northeastern University. The grant is to advance the competitive competitiveness of metal AM companies in the U.S.”

In addition to the academic section (and the rest of the regular comprehensive report sections), there are new and expanded features in Wohlers Report 2021:

3D printing of food, medicine, and electronics
Pricing of metals and polymers and the hidden costs of AM
Methods of AM part inspection
Pandemic’s impact on the AM industry
Compilation of expert reports from 34 countries
Tables of AM systems, software tools, service providers, and third-party materials

Of course, at TEAMM as well as MatEdU, we are particularly interested in the materials science and technician side of the industry and Wohlers Report 2021 has a dedicated section, 40-plus pages, on Materials and Processes. In the materials section, are explanations of the latest material processes, such as, vat photopolymerization, powder bed fusion, material jetting, binder jetting, and directed energy deposition, among others. There are deep dives into polymers, graphene and other nanomaterials, new polymer products as well as metal powders for metal AM. The section also explores various 3rd party material producers and talks about the Senvol public database of AM systems and materials.

If you are looking to understand the industry and its many fast-moving parts, Wohlers Report 2021 is a strong way to start (and finish). Read more about Wohlers Associates here.

Diving Into Additive Manufacturing With 3D Pen Technology

Tennessee Tech AM-WATCH project offers virtual workshop showcasing what’s possible with a 3D Pen.

In early January, Tennessee Tech University offered a special Virtual AM-WATCH Studio Workshop with its full day seminar: Diving into Additive Manufacturing Practices via 3D Pen Technology. In this course, Kim Grady, an accomplished NSF Principal Investigator and Instructional Technologist, created and conducted the 3-hour workshop for high school and technical college educators interested in teaching 3D printing skills.

Kim uses the 3Doodler 3D pen in this workshop to demonstrate 3D printing concepts such as layering, joining, geometry and measurement, and adding function to an object. If you are asking: What is a 3D printing pen? — it is a device designed to allow you to make PLA or ABS plastic 3D objects without a 3D printer. Essentially, the 3Doodler Pen is a handheld extruder.

The original 3Doodler originated with a 2013 Kickstarter (crowdfunding platform) project that made more than two million dollars above the fundraising goal. The company offers a variety of pens including easy to handle models for young hands and advanced control models for professionals.

Of course, there are other makes and models of 3D pens on the market and we will list a couple of reviews that share pros and cons for many of them. This will help you find the best 3d printing pen for your needs or your students’ needs. If you are searching for products and ideas, consider also using “3D printing pen” or “3D drawing pen” as near-synonymous terms. Many consider the 3D pen to be a young cousin to the 3D printer, a handheld one, at that.

You can watch the full 3-hour YouTube video, “Diving into Additive Manufacturing Practices via 3D Pen Technology,” also embedded here:

Tennessee Tech, through its AM Watch project and team, sponsored and delivered the workshop in collaboration with TEAMM’s Principal Investigator (PI) Mel Cossette and Kim Grady. Kim has been a MatEdU partner since 2004, an active participant for many NSF grants and continues to develop hands-on curriculum for a wide range of educators. She has produced downloadable courses and materials here on TEAMM as well as on MatEdU, including:

You also can find the complete collection of educator resources at the TEAMM Module page and on the MatEdU Module page (well over 100 modules you can download in PDF and PPT formats).

Dr. Ismail Fidan, who leads the AM-WATCH program, opened the workshop exploring and explaining how Additive Manufacturing is “a new way of making.” Graduate students followed Dr. Fidan’s remarks: Seymour Hasanov gave tips on the fundamentals of design, followed by Ankit Gupta highlighting various materials for AM, with Tyler Edwards explaining 3D Printer Parts and Operating Principles.

Kim Grady’s three-hour session was packed with detailed explanations for how to use the 3D pen to teach complex 3D printing concepts. She defined and demonstrated the basic concepts then guided the participants, virtually, through hands-on application.

Participants started with the basics of extrusion by writing their initials and fabricating basic shapes. To get a solid grasp on how wire framing and layering is used to fabricate real-world objects from PLA filament; squares were joined to create a hollow cube (shown below) and half spheres were joined to create a hollow ball. To illustrate and get experience with design, snowflakes with repeating hexagon shapes were constructed. “Real” 3D printing vocabulary and concepts were stressed throughout, making this workshop unique to any other 3D pen tutorial or workshop currently available.

As a “final project,” participants were challenged to apply what they learned to add function to their objects. The cube and ball concepts were used to fabricate a ball and socket, and the snowflake’s repeating shapes design concepts were applied to fabricate functioning gears.

Final project results and ideas for how to use the 3D pen in your classroom can be viewed on the YouTube link above.

Resources:

You can visit the 3Doodler page directly. The New York Times Wirecutter review “The Best 3D Pen” recommends it highly as well. In fact, they do not list others and only recommend this one – a significant statement for them. There are educator-specific classroom kits under their “Schools” tab. Basic sets start around $169 (but is on sale frequently for around $89) and a Pro set is available at $199.
Although a little dated, from 2019, this “Best 3D Pens” list from 3DInsider is well-rounded and linked to the Amazon listings for each pen (no affiliate relationship with us).

3D Pen Workshop Photo Gallery

How-3D-Printing-Pen-Technology-Works-w-Kim-Grady — Diagrams show similarities between the 3D pen and typical extrusion equipment used in Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) which is the non-branded, non-trademarked version of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) which belongs to Stratasys and is roughly the same method.

Participant at Kim Grady 3Doodler Pen Workshop at TTU — Dr. Fidan used his smart phone to give a peek at what was happening in the face-to-face classroom at TTU where some participants gathered to participate in the workshop.

Kim-Grady-Leading-3D-Doodler-Pen-Workshop — All participants received their own 3Doodler pen, all agreed they would be using the pen in their future 3D printing instruction.

3D-Printing-Doodler-Pen-in-Action-at-Kim-Grady-Workshop-at-TTU — 3D Pen Workshop Participants learn how to make square panels that were then joined to create a hollow cube.

Digging Deep With Online 3D Printing Lectures

Screenshot of TTU Additive Manufacturing YouTube Channel — Tennessee Tech University YouTube Channel Featuring the Golden Eagle Additively Innovative Lecture Series since 2016.

The College of Engineering at Tennessee Tech recently completed its well-known Golden Eagle Additively Innovative Lecture Series for Fall 2020. Under Dr. Ismail Fidan and his team, four experts — from nearby Somerset Community College in Kentucky to institutions spanning the globe in New Zealand, Norway, and the Netherlands — presented this semester on advanced Additive Manufacturing topics.

With 45 lectures recorded since the Spring semester of 2016, there is a range and depth available for just about anyone interested in learning about Additive Manufacturing. We wrote about the Tennessee Tech Announces Fall 2020 Additive Manufacturing Lecture Series as the school year got started. Despite COVID-19 shifting the world into online classrooms, Dr. Fidan has been using this virtual method, via Zoom, since the start of the program. One could definitely say he is an early adopter and visionary for making learning accessible and increasing TTU’s Engineering student access to world-renowned experts.

Early in 2020, the team decided to launch a YouTube channel as a way to share all of these lectures to an even wider audience. You can access the full Additively Innovative Lecture Series Archive, but we list out the titles below so that you can get an idea of the topic and niche diversity. On the archive page, each title takes you directly to the YouTube video. Perusing the list on the YouTube channel is not as straightforward, in this editor’s opinion, and so your time may be better spent picking from the list of video links from the archive directly.

Again, Bravo to the TTU team and Dr. Fidan for a semester filled with knowledge sharing and deeper insights into what makes Additive Manufacturing (aka 3D Printing) useful, valuable, and world changing.

**Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to their new YouTube channel.

To the Archives!:

Fall 2020 Lectures (Please note these lectures may not all be uploaded to YouTube yet)

- - Mass Production and Decision Making with Low Cost Additive Manufacturing for Institutions and Small Businesses
  - Design for AM: The Key to the Industrialization of AM
  - New Product Development for AM: Methods and Tools
  - Machine Learning in AM

Spring 2020 Lectures

- - New Functionalities for Metal AM by Embedded Intelligence, Puukko Pasi, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Ltd.
  - A Holistic Approach to Achieving the Best Possible Component Quality for AM Architectures for Vat Photopolymer and Laser Powder Bed Fusion Systems, David Bue Pedersen, Technical University of Denmark
  - Additive Manufacturing with High Temperature Polymers, Oana Ghita, University of Exeter
  - From 3D Printing to Digital Manufacturing, Wenchao Zhou, University of Arkansas

Fall 2019 Lectures

- - Generative Design Will Change the Future of Manufacturing, Shashi Jain, Intel Corporation
  - Sustaining Accessibility for Kids’ Creativity with Additive Manufacturing, Pisut Koomsap, Asian Institute of Technology
  - Design and Additive Manufacturing of Porous Titanium Scaffolds for Optimum Cell Viability in Bone Tissue Engineering, Bingbing Li, California State University
  - FDM-based Metal Additive Manufacturing, Haijun Gong, Georgia Southern University

Spring 2019 Lectures

- - The Phantom Hole Technique, Improving Structural Performance in FFF/FDM 3D Printed Products, Eric Wooldridge, Somerset Community College
  - Understanding Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing, Josh Dennis, EOS North America
  - Preparing Your Model for 3D Printing, Adam Wills, Tennessee College of Applied Technology Nashville
  - Project iGen: Using Additive Manufacturing for Service Learning, Amy Fricks, DeKalb County High School

Fall 2018 Lectures

- - Functionally Graded Additive Manufacturing, Eujin Pei, Brunel University
  - Design for Additive Manufacturing: The Key to the Industrial Adoption of Additive Manufacturing, Olaf Diegel, Lund University
  - Where’s my Spare Part? Changing Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul through Additive Manufacturing, Brett Conner, Youngstown State University
  - Integrating Additive Manufacturing into CAD Courses, Tom Singer, Sinclair Community College

Spring 2018 Lectures

- - Dental 3-D Printing Overview, Frank Alifui-Segbaya, Griffith University
  - AM Research and Applications for Real World Production and Impact, Eric Wooldridge, Somerset Community College
  - Free and Easy Software for Designing for 3-D Printing, Tim Gornet, Rapid Prototyping Center, University of Louisville
  - Wire + Arc Additive Manufacturing: Enabling 10-Meter Parts, Filomeno Martina, Welding Engineering and Laser Processing Center, Cranfield University

Fall 2017 Lectures

- - Next Generation Manufacturing: Professional and Technical Skills for the 21st Century Workforce, Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Center for Next Generation Manufacturing
  - Using 3-D Printed Parts to Couple Festo Didatic’s MecLab Stations in an Assembly Process, Khalid Tantawi, Department of Career Readiness-Mechatronics, Motlow State Community College
  - 3-D Printing, Design Thinking, and the Entrepreneurial Mindset, Phan Tran, Center for Architecture, Design, and Engineering, Lake Washington Institute of Technology
  - Workflow of the Additive Manufacturing Process, Kyle Bates-Green, National Resource Center for Materials Technology Education

Spring 2017 Lectures

- - Bioprinting and Tissue Engineering, Yunzhi Peter Yang, Medical Scholar Program in Bioengineering Scholarly Concentration, Stanford University
  - Making It Work, Marilyn Barger, NSF Florida Advanced Technological Education Center, Hillsborough Community College
  - Additive Manufacturing: Instrumental Systems in Research, Education, and Service, Bahram Asiabanpour, Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University
  - A Technique for Quick Introduction of 3-D Design and Prototyping, Hugh Jack, School of Engineering and Technology, Western Carolina University

Fall 2016 Lectures

- - Marketing Your Maker Business, TJ McCue
  - Content and Curriculum Development Efforts in 3-D Printing, Jesse Roitenbert, Stratasys
  - The Development of a Framework for 3-D Printing, Casting, & Entrepreneurship, Jay Watson, Cookeville High School
  - 3-D Printed Joints and Connectors for Assemblies, Nick Russell and Jacob Floyd, Tennessee Tech University

Spring 2016 Lectures

- - Mel Cossette and Robin Ballard, National Resource Center for Materials Technology Education
  - 3-D Printing – Future of Manufacturing: The 4th Wave of Human Civilization, Wenchao Zhou, University of Arkansas
  - Additive Manufacturing at the University of Waterloo, Ehsan Toyserkani, University of Waterloo
  - Opportunities in Additive Manufacturing, Amy Elliott, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  - AM/3DP Point-Counterpoint: A Look at AM’s Place Among the Headlines, Business, and Industry, Peter Yang, Stanford University
  - Additive Manufacturing as a Force for Innovation, Ian Campbell, Loughborough University
  - Perspectives on Additive Manufacturing, Tim Caffrey, Wohlers Associates
  - History of Additive Manufacturing, David Bourell, University of Texas at Austin
  - Additive Manufacturing Today and in the Future, Terry Wohlers, Wohlers Associates

Mass Production And Decision Making With Low Cost Additive Manufacturing

With over 7,000 face shield assemblies 3D printed, 1,000 ear savers (that make it possible to get a mask strap off the back of your ears), and 272,000 grams of filament used, Somerset Community College’s (SCC) Additive Manufacturing Center (AMC) stepped up in a major way to 3D print personal protective equipment (PPE) for Kentucky’s first responders in this COVID-pandemic time of need.

Professor Eric Wooldridge recently spoke at the Tennessee Tech University Fall 2020 Golden Eagle Additively Innovative Lecture Series on September 27, 2020 to encourage future 3D printing business owners and other academic institutions how they might leverage 3D printers in the future. For the SCC AMC, the majority of their printers cost less than $415 which helped them build a 24/7 production line of dozens of 3D printers, using two or less operators per day.

Wooldridge and SCC have received funding from the USDA Rural Development program as well as the National Science Foundation EPSCoR and ATE programs. The funding has been instrumental in building out a successful 3D printing training program as well as a robust production facility, as demonstrated by answering this call to serve first responders with PPE. The SCC Additive Manufacturing (AM) goal is to give Kentucky manufacturing an edge by helping to raise up a fully skilled AM-skilled workforce. A task that the SCC team seems well-prepared for after this PPE experience.

In fact, that’s what the “Mass Production And Decision Making With Low Cost Additive Manufacturing For Institutions And Small Businesses” webinar offered. It gave an inside look at how a small team could scale up a 3D printer production line as a way to make new products. In the talk, Professor Wooldridge offered a variety of insights and technical tips as he walked attendees, including industry representatives, through decisions the AMC made, including mistakes they quickly corrected, in printing thousands of shields and parts.

Low Cost Additive Manufacturing (LCAM)

First, what is a low cost 3D printer? SCC’s goal is to take a sub-$600 printer and show business owners how to make money with it. Once they demonstrate that, he sees owners take it from there. Low cost equipment can create a high quality production line. If they have 3D printers and 3D skills, it leads to innovation.

Before you jump in and start printing. Wooldridge believes you need to look at three main areas:

Design
Cycling
Maintenance

Part of these three areas involve asking four key questions (any company or organization would want to ask these):

How big is your team? (Small businesses are often under-staffed, so this is important)
What is your design flavor? (If you like to only create the models, that won’t work if you don’t like to print, too). You have control of the layout on the printer, the printer speed, are there non-essential features that are essential?

- - Within design — you have to think about your production.
    - Are you a “Fast Ninja”?
    - Are you a “Slow Stacked” approach?
    - Or in the middle is the “Flat Spread” type?

Production cycling, what do you most care about?
Do you want to do proactive or reactive maintenance? Which one will minimize your downtime?

Wooldridge digs in and keeps the talk moving quickly with rapid fire answers to his questions. In this short 30-minute lecture, you will get lots of very specific technical advice in addition to broad ranging issues you should think about.

An example: In the section on Cycling, he points out that one of the biggest enemies is runout; running out of filament. “Runout sensors that warn you that you are ‘about to run out’ of material are cool, but not the answer. The idea that your printer would warn you that you were running out of filament was not helpful in the middle of 20 or 30 printers going at once after 15 hours of run time. Quantity is the solution — getting large orders of filament with 3kg or 5kg rolls — what we call the Texas Size rolls (that’s where we ordered them from),” Wooldridge said.

The SCC team naturally found it was super rewarding to be able to help their community. Wooldridge closes the talk with how it was wonderful to be in a position to respond “with Additive to support our regions, we sent across state lines as well. It was great to be in the middle and answer that call.”

Ultimately, he concludes: “This pandemic has been a real turning point for Additive. It has made people realize what is possible. And you can see it in the industry response. You see how many companies are starting to now buy into higher-level equipment, buying up printers. The number of print farms that are being setup is drastically increasing. People have realized that this technology has the potential to step in and fill gaps wherever they are. Or allow someone to startup with a brand new business with hardly any infrastructure to begin with, in terms of manufacturing.”

Learn more about SCC and Professor Wooldridge’s efforts to increase workforce training and small business awareness of 3D printing as a way to grow a company and profits.

You can also read posts on the NSF Research News page: College using 3D printers to make face shields for regional hospital or on the Somerset Community College news page: SCC 3D Printers Used for Face Shields to Help Ease Shortage Due to Virus. The project was funded under the NSF ATE program here: Mobile Additive Manufacturing Platform for 21st Century STEM Workforce Enhancement (#1902437).

Wohlers Report 2020 Shows Additive Manufacturing $12 Billion Industry Growth

Each year, the Wohlers Report highlights the growth of the additive manufacturing industry. The Wohlers Report 2020 revealed that the 2019 additive manufacturing (AM) industry, consisting of all AM products and services worldwide, grew 21.2 percent to $11.867 billion.

In addition to all of the industry data, the report digs into three areas near to the hearts of AM News readers: TEAMM, Materials, and academic endeavors.

To start, Mel Cossette, Executive Director/Principal Investigator for the National Resource Center for Materials Technology Education (MatEdU) and TEAMM Project, provides an update of the TEAMM Network activities, including:

- - The TEAMM website has 11 curated educational modules, which help classroom teachers include approved AM content quickly in their curricula. Modules include Materials for 3D Printing by Fused Deposition and Additive Manufactured Polymers in Bending Stress. Both basic and advanced options are offered. These modules are freely available on the website with videos and other educational resources.
  - TEAMM also continues to participate in the ASTM F42 Technical Committee on Additive Manufacturing Technologies and provides input on global AM standards.

The Materials section of the Wohlers Report gives a comprehensive summary with highlights about a niche filament material maker, Taulman3D, which has been instrumental in bringing new 3D printing materials to market for the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) method. In 2012, material filament choices were ABS or PLA. Now, there are dozens of types of new materials and Taulman3D led the charge with a nylon copolymer.

Dr. Ismail Fidan, Professor in Manufacturing and Engineering Technology at Tennessee Tech University, provides an international glimpse into the many activities happening at colleges, universities, and research institutes – almost 140 of them. Here are just a few examples:

- - The University of North Texas has established the Center for Agile and Adaptive AM with 2-year support of $10 million from the State of Texas Legislature.
  - HP, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and National Research Foundation Singapore have established the HP – NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Laboratory on AM, an $84 million project.
  - In Late 2019, the U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for research and Engineering selected 7 awardees for the Manufacturing Engineering Education Program. These distinguished educational and Industry partners are receiving more than $32 million over a three-year period.

Although 2020 has presented some rather large challenges to financial growth, the future of additive manufacturing still has a bright future, partly due to the many initiatives that have shone a light on what 3D printing can do (as highlighted in recent AM News posts highlighted below). The Wohlers Report 2020 gives us evidence of the industry’s resilience and enthusiasm on both an individual and corporate level. There is hope and opportunity thanks to people who know how to create and make, no matter the circumstances or difficulties around them.

Two posts highlighting the way 3D printing has helped during the Coronavirus pandemic:

An earlier version of this post was published at Forbes: Additive Manufacturing Industry Grows To Almost 12 Billion In 2019.

Disclosure: I received a media copy of the Wohlers Report to review.