After closing out the Champ bar in the Marriott last night I had a fit of nostalgia. Nostalgia for when only the CEOs stayed at the Marriott, nostalgia for when ¨our industry¨ was a smattering of tables off to one side of Euromold. Nostalgia for when our industry was a herd of large German men teetering and tottering, unsteadily putting one foot before another, mopping sweaty brows with kerchiefs, readying for another Pretzel and pint-fueled day. Yearning for the Stammtisch and the shhryt sound of Mercedes leather, they toiled. For when cocktail was a dress code not a drink. For a later time when aunties and uncles all wanted to know about this miracle called 3D printing. Nostalgia for that time when all these new powder companies sprouted from nowhere, like mushrooms after rain. It seemed like anyone who could get powder into a glass plug got a stand that year. Needless to say, they should have all just sat on those plugs, stayed home, and saved themselves the airfare. Nostalgia for when things were looking grim and for things were looking endless.

Where are we now? 

Beautiful vapor smoothed parts at LuxYours.

This is not one of these times. We’ve done and all grown up already too. Formnext is a lot like Frankfurt now, there are no tourists here. No visitors in this mine. The curious are watching YouTube videos on AI and preparing a ¨breakthrough AI mindset¨ PowerPoint cornucopias of lies. A lot of the fraudsters have gone too, no doubt terrified of our financial performance they can hear crypto once again beckon. A lot of the large corporates have gone as well. Large materials companies and industries have taken their digital twinning or greenwashing elsewhere.

No Tourists, Just Professionals

What we have left areprofessionals, people committed to the technology and people that are in it for the long haul. Now, of course, not everyone will be here next year. A lot of talent is leaving. A lot of bankruptcies in the offing. There also seems to be a bit of a mismatch between stand size and revenue this year. Many firms are on the edge of bankruptcy. Job hunting is once again one of the main activities this year. Once, it was so for eager young graduates. Now, it is mid-career people who have been let go or old hands brimming with experience who have been shunted aside. Judging from the mood consultancy is more likely to be a successful avenue than is a full-time position. Capex is low so the machine guys are generally hurting. But, it is not like it used to be; a rising tide does not lift all boats anymore, and individual financial performance between competitors is diverging. There are people doing extremely well. However, the Champ bar still makes more money than most 3D printing companies. A lot of startups are living off of fumes. 

 Progress?

Some things never change. There is no internet. I have to find the Opal room and no one can tell me where it is. I spent 35 minutes trying to find out on the Formnext site when the opening times were. Now, we have an app that doesn´t tell us anything either. Progress. If you ever find a headless man in the Messe, know that he´s most probably an Interaction Designer working for Formnext and I found him first. Frankfurt is, of course, horrible; if I lived here, I´d try hard drugs, too, to escape the place without having to go near the station. The desire to self-medicate is strong in this Dementor-ridden city. I’ve just been here a day and I feel like biting my gloves more than Tyson does. Other places have wind chill, Frankfurt has soul chill. Here, finance bro´s actually need their body warmers. I heard Uwe Boll does the city planning here. Frankfurt is like Robocop but we don’t even get robots. But seeing everyone is heartwarming, our little cottage industry all grown up. We’re able to print everything, except profits. 

Changes 

Theres more of a Chinese presence it seems. They must love the sky here, it’s so much like home. The Chinese firms are once again more professional and substantive. They seem to be moving a lot faster than the western firms.  Across the board we can see a Chinese Additive Manufacturing industry that no longer needs us save for some key bits of software. Bambu Lab is again steamrolling its way forward. Formlabs opened up its materials offering and this should have shook the industry to the core. But, no one seems to have noticed. People seem to not see that Formlabs and Bambu want to inhabit their space. On the industrial side we can see a lot less big Material Extrusion systems in both the large and medium format categories. We can see small producers make niche machines in almost every segment. There are substantive new releases this year. EOS has a new P3 for example and NanoDimension has a new micro printer for electronics.

Above all there is gradual, useful, progress. Theres a large format Quintus HIP for the Long Beach crowd and Additive Industries has sold multiple machines to one customer. There´s integration news but less so than before. But, Continuum did qualify powders for Renishaw RenAM 500 and Equispheres is to work with 3D Systems showcasing the viability of the recycled and locally made powder market. Some stuff is gaining some traction, FKM bought a Voxejket HSS for example. The adoption of that technology should be faster due to the huge cost advantages but it is happening none the less. There are also some unusual alliances, with Dubai based Leap71 allying with Eplus. Would that indicate that there would be a non-US path to complex geometries that so far would always need US firms? There is a lot of business model tweaking as well. I love the fact that UpNano has launched a 3D printing service called NanoPro, this should really accelerate the adoption of their technology. 

A Material World

Materials have become more functional and more specific. A lot of the new releases are very specific to applications and specific parts. We’re seeing people take a lot of interest in combining machines and materials to tackle new applications. Too much stuff is focused on the semiconductor market, lemmings hearing the noise and wondering until the cliff´s edge where it will lead them. But, generally I’m very enthused that we’re tackling real parts in casting, sporting goods, medical, space, RF and industry. I like seeing real helmets, molds for silicone, molds for aerospace parts and more. No more Geiger Sci Fi stuff but real world parts. We see machines optimized for a particular purpose. More attention is being payed to oil and gas, shipping, rail, space and other areas. Application driven thinking is permeating our industry. There is more jockeying for position in certain industries with firms more focused on one industry or another. There are also substantive improvements to a lot of machines across the board. We’re seeing a lot more machines, software and materials optimized for manufacturing.

Defense, Defense!

A 3D Systems Titan mold tool.

Defense is very top of mind right now. The biggest change from a year ago is that defense was a thing that people would look at last year. Now everyone is looking at defense. Drones are huge at the moment as are suppressors. A question for you, what is the fastest growing application in 3D printing right now?  I believe that suppressors are the fastest growing application in 3D printing. Scott wrote his first market report on silencers in 2017 and was on the money with his analysis recently. 3D printed suppressors outperform conventional ones, are able to balance key characteristics better, can reduce noise, reduce thermal signature better and are profitable. A relatively compact thing they are filling up service bureaus and selling machines. I believe that almost every modern soldier will get a 3D printed suppressor eventually. In the US a lot of consumers want them too. This is a far cry from many people´s, 3D print a better planet ideals. But, the machine never did care too much about what it printed. Wasn´t that the whole point? We can make (almost) any geometry. Its about time we gave a good hard think about what that actually means.