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Startups Push 3D Printers As Industry Leaders Falter
gthuang88 writes: Given the hype around 3D printing, you'd never guess that established leaders like 3D Systems and Stratasys have seen their stock fall by 75 percent in the last year. Big companies like HP, Amazon, and Boeing are getting into the field, too, but startups are still where a lot of the action is. Now Formlabs, a Boston-area startup, has released a new 3D printer that is supposed to be more reliable and higher quality than its predecessors. The device uses stereolithography and is aimed at professional designers and engineers. The question is whether Formlabs---and other startups like MarkForged, Voxel8, and Desktop Metal---can find enough of a market to survive until 3D printing becomes a more mainstream form of manufacturing.
I just don't find enough uses for it to justify the floor or bench space for the machine. In subtractive manufacturing where one takes away material I can work in metal, plastic, and wood. I can cut, plane, sand, shave, drill, tap, or die-cut, and if I pick up one of those tabletop mills, I could mill and otherwise create channels, and these can all be done in three different materials.
Right now the only practical material I could work with on a 3d printer is plastic, and even then I'm limited to particular types of plastic. Plus, due to the texturing left by most 3d printers I'd have to plane, sand, shave, drill, tap, or die-cut anyway.
I can see design firms that need to rapid-prototype parts using 3d printers, before they ultimately design molds to cast the final plastic parts in. I can even see a few very specialized applications where the technology makes more sense, especially for one-offs, but otherwise 3d printing isn't mass-production.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's difficult to justify the cost, both monetarily and learning curve, rather than farming the work out to a machine shop. I worked at a startup that manufactured very expensive widgets and we used a machine shop to fabricate our parts only assembling them in house. They are right down the road, so we used them for many prototypes also. You really have to do economics when doing engineering. If he shop is making 10% profit on something that is 5% of your business, how many parts do you have to sell to justify doing it yourself?