The curious case of large-scale 3D printer farms
The Atomic Layers: S3E10 (00066)
Atomic Layer of the Day:
Today, I spoke with a leading European manufacturer of filaments for FFF 3D printers. He's a good friend, and we occasionally talk about the "challenging life in the AM industry." Today, we touched on the topic of Bambu Lab's market dominance, which led us to discuss large 3D printing farms.
Bambu Lab has revolutionized the additive manufacturing sector to such an extent that it is slowly and inevitably pushing small service bureaus out of business—albeit unintentionally. Many former 3D printing service customers are now buying the super affordable, super efficient, and super easy-to-use P1, X1, or A1 printers and doing the work themselves. Service bureaus are drying up...
As a result, when a manufacturing company buys its first 3D printer, they soon realize they can produce many different things with it. Before long, they buy another one. And another. Suddenly, they have 30, 50, or even 100 printers... and are processing hundreds of kilograms of filament per month.
From the perspective of the AM industry, such a company becomes a serious player. The catch is that it's not really part of the AM industry—it's part of its original market sector but simply uses a large number of 3D printers in its daily operations.
They are 3D printing users, but not part of the 3D printing industry.
These 3D printing farms are becoming more common. It's difficult to estimate their exact numbers. Only filament distributors, from whom they order materials, know of their existence.
Right now, in my humble opinion, 3D printing farms are one of the key forces driving the market.
Atomic Layer from the Past:
10-10-2023: Azul 3D secured $15 million in series A funding.
Atomic News & Gossips:
Avi Reichental hinted on LinkedIn that Nexa3D is moving to new (larger) headquarters and will launch production of its own filament! This refers to Essentium.
BigRep may be dramatically losing value on the stock market, but it released DRYCON - a new industrial grade filament dryer!
COBOD - a construction 3D printing company, released BOD3 - new generation 3D printer.