State Of Play: 3D Printing

Once a booming new industry seemingly set to take over the world with its revolutionary technology, today the 3D printing industry lies partially buried, with even the pioneering MakerBot Industries shutting stores and slashing staff numbers. The question is though, is this a fatal blow or merely a blip in 3D printing's inevitable rise?

It’s not been a good year

Even the most loyal advocate of 3D printing has to admit that 2015 is the year that saw the 3D printing bubble burst. After riding a five-year wave of innovation and hype, a period in which 3D printing was brought to the public through a series of crowdfunded projects, stores, events and products, as well as being heralded as the return of old-fashioned, localised manufacturing, things suddenly fell off a cliff.

MakerBot Industries, the poster child for the 3D printing field, shuttered its three high-street stores, let go 20 per cent of its staff and its parent company, Stratasys, saw its share price plummet from 104.16 on November 17, 2014, down to 22.59 as of November 16, 2015. At its height on January 3rd, 2014, Stratasys had once seen its shares worth 136.46 each but now they were worth a fraction of that.

Things weren’t localised to MakerBot and Stratasys too. 3D Systems, another prominent 3D printer manufacturer whose CTO Chuck Hall is credited with actually inventing the stereolithographic process used by many of the machines, also saw its share price nosedive, falling from 35.33 last year down to 8.65 over the same period. Organovo also saw its share price halved, Voxeljet AG too. It was a collapse that reminded people of the dot-com bust. Now, far from people zealously proclaiming that in the future ‘everything will be 3D printed’, investors were actively veering away from the tech, fearing that the industry was now in terminal decline.

Source : techgignews.com