Medical 3D printing is
likely to be a billion dollar industry“
Christopher Barnatt,
futurist, author, videographer and professor, advises companies, non-profit
organizations and government agencies on technology and issues concerning the
future. In this interview, he shares his insights and gives us some direction
as to where 3D printing is headed.
Christopher Barnatt is a futurist, author,
videographer and Associate Professor of Strategy and Future Studies
at Nottingham University
Business School. His 3D printing YouTube videos have been hugely popular and
his May 2013 book „3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution“ has been
translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Barnatt is a member of the World
Future Society, a contributor to 3DPrinter.net, and sits on the
editorial board of Replicator World.
He advises companies, non-profit organizations
and government agencies on technology and issues concerning the future. His
interests and expertise range from 3D printing to augmented reality,
nanotechnology, cloud computing and synthetic biology, among others. Last week,
he published „3D Printing: Second
Edition“. In this interview, Christopher Barnatt shares his
insights and gives us some direction as to where 3D printing is headed.
After about 3 decades in the shadow, 3D
printing has hit the spotlight. Why now?
For a start, both technologies and material variety have
improved significantly in recent years. Back in the late 1980s, the first 3D
printers could only output brittle resins, and hence their application was
limited to prototyping and producing patterns. But today there are hundreds of
3D printing materials, so allowing final molds, end-use parts and even entire
products or artworks to be 3D printed in a variety of plastics, but also metals
and ceramics. The price of the technology is also falling.
Just as significantly, what has changed is the possibility for
end-to-end digital workflows – what a VP from 3D Systems described to me
recently as working across entire ‘digital threads’. So today it is not just
about the printers, but also the software, scanners, online distributions
platforms, and so on. For the first two decades of 3D printing, most computers
could not work with 3D object files, and sharing 3D across the Internet was not
possible. But today all of the digital support infrastructure to facilitate 3D
printing is in place, and this is – along with technology improvements and
falling prices – is what is now tugging 3D printing into the mainstream.
You talk to mainstream businesses about the
relevance and future of 3D printing. What are their most common questions and
how do you answer them?
Companies want to know the relevance of 3D printing to their
business and its bottom line. Right now the big opportunities in 3D printing
are to use the technology to produce molds and tooling, or certain types of
low-volume, complex or customized end-use parts. Today most things that are 3D
printed are prototypes, but the general feeling in the 3D printing industry is
that by 2020 we will have passed a tipping point, with 3D printing being used
more for direct digital manufacturing (DDM) than for prototyping.
Cost savings from using 3D printers to produce molds, patterns,
jigs and other tooling can save a lot of time and money. For example, 3D
printing sandcast molds using the hardware available from ExOne or Voxeljet may
cut production costs by 70 % in some instances. This is not the kind of 3D
printing that gets reported, but it is where the big, mainstream industrial
opportunities lie.
You’ve been following the future of 3D printing
and other technologies closely for years. What has surprised you the most?
I’m most surprised by the extent to which many large companies
still pigeonhole the technology as “rapid prototyping”, so blinding them to
wider opportunities. In many ways, 3D printing technology and the possibilities
it offers are advancing more rapidly than the mindsets needed to embrace them.
I’m also surprised that many companies do not seem to get that they do not have
to 3D print an entire product to benefit from direct digital manufacturing.
For example, 3D printing part of a product casing can allow a
customized product to be offered at low cost. The simplest example of this is
ThatsMyFace.com – they buy $10 action figures, add 3D printed heads modeled
from customer photos, and sell the product on for $100. That’s the kind of
opportunity that 3D printing represents, and yet many people see 3D printing as
“that thing they do in the prototyping department”.
On another level, I have been surprised by the speed of
development of new 3D printing materials for personal printers in the last year
or so. Filaments like bronzeFill from ColorFab, together with thermoplastic
elastomers like NinjaFlex from Fenner Drives, have significantly increased the
scope of things that can be 3D printed on lower-cost desktop hardware, which is
amazing. Back in October at the TCT Show, I was also impressed to see for
myself that it is now possible to 3D print in metal on the desktop thanks to
Realizer’s SLM-50.
HP’s entry into the 3D printing space has
attracted a lot of attention even though HP’s first industrial printer will
only be commercially available in 2016. How does HP’s announcement impact the
3D printing industry and what does it mean for more established companies like
Stratasys and 3D Systems?
HP’s entry into 3D printing is certainly significant in that it
brings another large player to market. But we also need to remember that HP has
been here before, as they sold re-branded Stratasys hardware in Europe in the
early years of 2000. And as you imply, HP’s position is also a bit like China
landing on the Moon. It is very likely to happen some day, but it has not
actually happened yet. 2016 really is some distance into the future in 3D
printing terms, so I don’t think 3D Systems or Stratasys have anything to worry
about anytime soon.
Also, the MultiJet Fusion technology showcased by HP a few weeks
back will be great for prototyping, and maybe for making some final parts. But
it does not look likely to be a consumer technology. And it is not a technology
for 3D printing in metal. Hence, while HP is entering an expanding marketplace,
it is also one in which the proportion of the market using the kind of
technology they are introducing is falling. Now if the company had announced a
new direct metal 3D printing technology, that really would have been game
changing.
Your new book on 3D printing has just come
out. What makes it different from your first book on 3D printing? Why was an
update necessary?
So much has changed since the first edition came out in May
2013! The book is a major update – with about 70 % of the content new or
majorly re-written – to reflect new technologies and big changes in the 3D
printing industry. For example, in May 2013 there were only five publicly
traded 3D printer manufactures. In November 2014 there are ten – even excluding
HP (not here yet) and Bosch/Dremel (who are now selling re-branded hardware
from Chinese manufacturer Flash Forge 3D Technology).
Personal 3D scanning has also come of age, while both Stratasys
and 3D Systems have new and very impressive color technologies on the market.
And we are seeing exciting developments with composite materials. So while the
book has the same basic structure as before, a lot needed to be changed to keep
things up-to-date.
It seems like there are two main avenues where
3D printing is developing now – the home “maker” market and the industrial
market. Will they finally converge and create an economy where manufacturing is
really distributed?
I don’t think they will converge. Yes, by 2020 we are likely to
see a million personal 3D printers sold every year. But personal printing will
I think still only be around 10 % of the total 3D printing market – and we need
to remember that many personal 3D printers are actually sold to companies. This
is not to say that the Maker community is not important and growing. The entry
of the $30billion-turnover Kinpo Group (in the guise of XYZprinting) into this
market in 2014 signals that.
But distributed manufacturing – and most personal printing –
will I think take place in factories, bureaus and other commercial facilities
for a long time to come. Where we will see convergence is in the future merger
of 3D printing with other local digital manufacturing technologies, and most
notably synthetic biology and nanotechnology. And I devote most of chapter 7 to
that!
You’ve illustrated that there are four curves
that show the different adoption timelines of 3D printing for 4 different uses:
Rapid prototyping, molds and tooling, digital manufacturing and personal
fabrication. Where do you see the greatest potential in the short- and medium
term and what will eventually be the biggest market?
Today, as I’ve said, the biggest market is rapid prototyping.
All markets will grow – so rapid prototyping may be two or three times bigger
by decade’s end – but by 2020 the far bigger market will be the production of
molds and tooling. By 2025, it will probably be the manufacture of end-use
parts or entire final products. Personal fabrication will, as I’ve said, be
big, but not the driver of the industry.
In which areas of the economy will 3D printing
have the greatest impact?
It will be in those parts of the economy that generate their
profits from high-value, customized or personalized products. So today this
means aerospace, and things like jewelry making, customized artworks and
designer consumer goods. Oh and in the medical sector – including digital
dentistry, and in time the bioprinting of human tissues for drug testing and
transplantation. By 2020, medical 3D printing alone is likely to be a billion
dollar industry.
Companies like Airbus, Boeing, Siemens, GE,
Ford and, most recently, Alcoa, are venturing into the 3D printing space for
turbines, jet engine parts and other industrial goods. How long do you think
will it take before additive manufacturing is actually used for production?
It already is – I’ve a whole chapter on companies now 3D
printing end-use parts of final products, and ranging from artworks to jewelry,
and toys to designer goods. If you want a few hundred thermoplastic components
and don’t have a mold, 3D printing is already the most cost effective means of
production. Earlier this year SpaceX successfully launched one of its Falcon 9
rockets with a 3D printed main oxidizer valve in one of the engines. Meanwhile
many older airliners already have several 3D printed parts fitted where
traditional replacements were not available.
Several people are trying to make filament out
of recycled plastic – the most common is traditional recycled plastic from PET
bottles, the use of ocean plastic or plastic from garbage dumps seems to be in
a more experimental stage. Do you think using recycled plastic for filament has
a chance to become mainstream?
Probably – what Tyler McNaney kickstarted with Filabot is very
cool. But I also think that we will start to find other ways to make 3D
printing more sustainable – fermenting bioplastic filaments using synthetic
biology, for example.
What are other ways in which 3D printing can have
a positive impact on the environment and the use of resources?
Because 3D printing is additive, it allows significant material
savings. For example, earlier this year Airbus reported that 3D printing final
aerospace parts can result in up to 90 % material and energy savings. 3D
printed parts can also be designed to use less material, while maintaining or
improving on required physical properties. For example, a 3D printed house –
like those made by WinSun earlier this year – can have insulation gaps in their
concrete walls.
3D printing will also allow local manufacturing on demand, so
saving on resources diverted into transportation and storage. Finally, 3D
printing will allow us to keep old things longer, as it will allow spare parts
to be printed to facilitate repair. Today, most things spend most of their time
in pre-purchase storage or landfill. 3D printing should help them to spend more
time in the useful middle!
Many experts see great opportunities for 3D
printing in the medical field – for medical devices as well as in the area of
bioprinting, where new transplant organs may come out of a 3D printer. Do you
agree with this assessment? When do you think will hospitals be able to print
organs for use in real patients?
The first commercial bioprinted products – tissue samples to
speed drug testing from Organovo – are probably now less than a year from
commercial application. My guess is that we will see human trails of simple
bioprinted grafts in the first half of the 2020s, and maybe more complex organs
like kidneys put into people around 2020.
The last chapter in your book is titled “Brave
New World?”, and promises to “separate probable fact from science fiction to
predict the real 3D printing future” – what are the most common myths and what
the most probable predictions in 3D printing?
The biggest myths are that you can only 3D print in plastics,
that 3D printing is just rapid prototyping, and that most future personal
fabrication will take place at home. In reality, 3D printing is – at least
medium-term – going to be about finding new ways to use traditional
manufacturing processes more effectively (for example by 3D printing molds and
other tooling), and the manufacture of customized and/or high-value products
that cannot be made cost-effectively or at all by other means.
My own view is that, in ten years, about 20 % of products will
be in whole or part 3D printed, with far more things reliant on 3D printed
tooling. In ten years, millions of people will own a 3D printer. But most 3D
printed products will come out of commercial facilities – hopefully fairly
local ones – and a great many 3D printed items will be spare parts.
I also think that by the time 3D printing becomes truly
mainstream, it will have converged so significantly with other technologies
that we will have ceased to call it 3D printing. Yes, there will be a 3D
Printing Revolution. But more significant will be the Local Digital
Manufacturing (LDM) Revolution of which 3D printing will form the first part.
Courtesy to drupa.com
Christopher Barnatt,
futurist, author, videographer and professor, advises companies, non-profit
organizations and government agencies on technology and issues concerning the
future. In this interview, he shares his insights and gives us some direction
as to where 3D printing is headed.
Christopher Barnatt is a futurist, author,
videographer and Associate Professor of Strategy and Future Studies
at Nottingham University
Business School. His 3D printing YouTube videos have been hugely popular and
his May 2013 book „3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution“ has been
translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Barnatt is a member of the World
Future Society, a contributor to 3DPrinter.net, and sits on the
editorial board of Replicator World.
He advises companies, non-profit organizations
and government agencies on technology and issues concerning the future. His
interests and expertise range from 3D printing to augmented reality,
nanotechnology, cloud computing and synthetic biology, among others. Last week,
he published „3D Printing: Second
Edition“. In this interview, Christopher Barnatt shares his
insights and gives us some direction as to where 3D printing is headed.
After about 3 decades in the shadow, 3D
printing has hit the spotlight. Why now?
For a start, both technologies and material variety have
improved significantly in recent years. Back in the late 1980s, the first 3D
printers could only output brittle resins, and hence their application was
limited to prototyping and producing patterns. But today there are hundreds of
3D printing materials, so allowing final molds, end-use parts and even entire
products or artworks to be 3D printed in a variety of plastics, but also metals
and ceramics. The price of the technology is also falling.
Just as significantly, what has changed is the possibility for
end-to-end digital workflows – what a VP from 3D Systems described to me
recently as working across entire ‘digital threads’. So today it is not just
about the printers, but also the software, scanners, online distributions
platforms, and so on. For the first two decades of 3D printing, most computers
could not work with 3D object files, and sharing 3D across the Internet was not
possible. But today all of the digital support infrastructure to facilitate 3D
printing is in place, and this is – along with technology improvements and
falling prices – is what is now tugging 3D printing into the mainstream.
You talk to mainstream businesses about the
relevance and future of 3D printing. What are their most common questions and
how do you answer them?
Companies want to know the relevance of 3D printing to their
business and its bottom line. Right now the big opportunities in 3D printing
are to use the technology to produce molds and tooling, or certain types of
low-volume, complex or customized end-use parts. Today most things that are 3D
printed are prototypes, but the general feeling in the 3D printing industry is
that by 2020 we will have passed a tipping point, with 3D printing being used
more for direct digital manufacturing (DDM) than for prototyping.
Cost savings from using 3D printers to produce molds, patterns,
jigs and other tooling can save a lot of time and money. For example, 3D
printing sandcast molds using the hardware available from ExOne or Voxeljet may
cut production costs by 70 % in some instances. This is not the kind of 3D
printing that gets reported, but it is where the big, mainstream industrial
opportunities lie.
You’ve been following the future of 3D printing
and other technologies closely for years. What has surprised you the most?
I’m most surprised by the extent to which many large companies
still pigeonhole the technology as “rapid prototyping”, so blinding them to
wider opportunities. In many ways, 3D printing technology and the possibilities
it offers are advancing more rapidly than the mindsets needed to embrace them.
I’m also surprised that many companies do not seem to get that they do not have
to 3D print an entire product to benefit from direct digital manufacturing.
For example, 3D printing part of a product casing can allow a
customized product to be offered at low cost. The simplest example of this is
ThatsMyFace.com – they buy $10 action figures, add 3D printed heads modeled
from customer photos, and sell the product on for $100. That’s the kind of
opportunity that 3D printing represents, and yet many people see 3D printing as
“that thing they do in the prototyping department”.
On another level, I have been surprised by the speed of
development of new 3D printing materials for personal printers in the last year
or so. Filaments like bronzeFill from ColorFab, together with thermoplastic
elastomers like NinjaFlex from Fenner Drives, have significantly increased the
scope of things that can be 3D printed on lower-cost desktop hardware, which is
amazing. Back in October at the TCT Show, I was also impressed to see for
myself that it is now possible to 3D print in metal on the desktop thanks to
Realizer’s SLM-50.
HP’s entry into the 3D printing space has
attracted a lot of attention even though HP’s first industrial printer will
only be commercially available in 2016. How does HP’s announcement impact the
3D printing industry and what does it mean for more established companies like
Stratasys and 3D Systems?
HP’s entry into 3D printing is certainly significant in that it
brings another large player to market. But we also need to remember that HP has
been here before, as they sold re-branded Stratasys hardware in Europe in the
early years of 2000. And as you imply, HP’s position is also a bit like China
landing on the Moon. It is very likely to happen some day, but it has not
actually happened yet. 2016 really is some distance into the future in 3D
printing terms, so I don’t think 3D Systems or Stratasys have anything to worry
about anytime soon.
Also, the MultiJet Fusion technology showcased by HP a few weeks
back will be great for prototyping, and maybe for making some final parts. But
it does not look likely to be a consumer technology. And it is not a technology
for 3D printing in metal. Hence, while HP is entering an expanding marketplace,
it is also one in which the proportion of the market using the kind of
technology they are introducing is falling. Now if the company had announced a
new direct metal 3D printing technology, that really would have been game
changing.
Your new book on 3D printing has just come
out. What makes it different from your first book on 3D printing? Why was an
update necessary?
So much has changed since the first edition came out in May
2013! The book is a major update – with about 70 % of the content new or
majorly re-written – to reflect new technologies and big changes in the 3D
printing industry. For example, in May 2013 there were only five publicly
traded 3D printer manufactures. In November 2014 there are ten – even excluding
HP (not here yet) and Bosch/Dremel (who are now selling re-branded hardware
from Chinese manufacturer Flash Forge 3D Technology).
Personal 3D scanning has also come of age, while both Stratasys
and 3D Systems have new and very impressive color technologies on the market.
And we are seeing exciting developments with composite materials. So while the
book has the same basic structure as before, a lot needed to be changed to keep
things up-to-date.
It seems like there are two main avenues where
3D printing is developing now – the home “maker” market and the industrial
market. Will they finally converge and create an economy where manufacturing is
really distributed?
I don’t think they will converge. Yes, by 2020 we are likely to
see a million personal 3D printers sold every year. But personal printing will
I think still only be around 10 % of the total 3D printing market – and we need
to remember that many personal 3D printers are actually sold to companies. This
is not to say that the Maker community is not important and growing. The entry
of the $30billion-turnover Kinpo Group (in the guise of XYZprinting) into this
market in 2014 signals that.
But distributed manufacturing – and most personal printing –
will I think take place in factories, bureaus and other commercial facilities
for a long time to come. Where we will see convergence is in the future merger
of 3D printing with other local digital manufacturing technologies, and most
notably synthetic biology and nanotechnology. And I devote most of chapter 7 to
that!
You’ve illustrated that there are four curves
that show the different adoption timelines of 3D printing for 4 different uses:
Rapid prototyping, molds and tooling, digital manufacturing and personal
fabrication. Where do you see the greatest potential in the short- and medium
term and what will eventually be the biggest market?
Today, as I’ve said, the biggest market is rapid prototyping.
All markets will grow – so rapid prototyping may be two or three times bigger
by decade’s end – but by 2020 the far bigger market will be the production of
molds and tooling. By 2025, it will probably be the manufacture of end-use
parts or entire final products. Personal fabrication will, as I’ve said, be
big, but not the driver of the industry.
In which areas of the economy will 3D printing
have the greatest impact?
It will be in those parts of the economy that generate their
profits from high-value, customized or personalized products. So today this
means aerospace, and things like jewelry making, customized artworks and
designer consumer goods. Oh and in the medical sector – including digital
dentistry, and in time the bioprinting of human tissues for drug testing and
transplantation. By 2020, medical 3D printing alone is likely to be a billion
dollar industry.
Companies like Airbus, Boeing, Siemens, GE,
Ford and, most recently, Alcoa, are venturing into the 3D printing space for
turbines, jet engine parts and other industrial goods. How long do you think
will it take before additive manufacturing is actually used for production?
It already is – I’ve a whole chapter on companies now 3D
printing end-use parts of final products, and ranging from artworks to jewelry,
and toys to designer goods. If you want a few hundred thermoplastic components
and don’t have a mold, 3D printing is already the most cost effective means of
production. Earlier this year SpaceX successfully launched one of its Falcon 9
rockets with a 3D printed main oxidizer valve in one of the engines. Meanwhile
many older airliners already have several 3D printed parts fitted where
traditional replacements were not available.
Several people are trying to make filament out
of recycled plastic – the most common is traditional recycled plastic from PET
bottles, the use of ocean plastic or plastic from garbage dumps seems to be in
a more experimental stage. Do you think using recycled plastic for filament has
a chance to become mainstream?
Probably – what Tyler McNaney kickstarted with Filabot is very
cool. But I also think that we will start to find other ways to make 3D
printing more sustainable – fermenting bioplastic filaments using synthetic
biology, for example.
What are other ways in which 3D printing can have
a positive impact on the environment and the use of resources?
Because 3D printing is additive, it allows significant material
savings. For example, earlier this year Airbus reported that 3D printing final
aerospace parts can result in up to 90 % material and energy savings. 3D
printed parts can also be designed to use less material, while maintaining or
improving on required physical properties. For example, a 3D printed house –
like those made by WinSun earlier this year – can have insulation gaps in their
concrete walls.
3D printing will also allow local manufacturing on demand, so
saving on resources diverted into transportation and storage. Finally, 3D
printing will allow us to keep old things longer, as it will allow spare parts
to be printed to facilitate repair. Today, most things spend most of their time
in pre-purchase storage or landfill. 3D printing should help them to spend more
time in the useful middle!
Many experts see great opportunities for 3D
printing in the medical field – for medical devices as well as in the area of
bioprinting, where new transplant organs may come out of a 3D printer. Do you
agree with this assessment? When do you think will hospitals be able to print
organs for use in real patients?
The first commercial bioprinted products – tissue samples to
speed drug testing from Organovo – are probably now less than a year from
commercial application. My guess is that we will see human trails of simple
bioprinted grafts in the first half of the 2020s, and maybe more complex organs
like kidneys put into people around 2020.
The last chapter in your book is titled “Brave
New World?”, and promises to “separate probable fact from science fiction to
predict the real 3D printing future” – what are the most common myths and what
the most probable predictions in 3D printing?
The biggest myths are that you can only 3D print in plastics,
that 3D printing is just rapid prototyping, and that most future personal
fabrication will take place at home. In reality, 3D printing is – at least
medium-term – going to be about finding new ways to use traditional
manufacturing processes more effectively (for example by 3D printing molds and
other tooling), and the manufacture of customized and/or high-value products
that cannot be made cost-effectively or at all by other means.
My own view is that, in ten years, about 20 % of products will
be in whole or part 3D printed, with far more things reliant on 3D printed
tooling. In ten years, millions of people will own a 3D printer. But most 3D
printed products will come out of commercial facilities – hopefully fairly
local ones – and a great many 3D printed items will be spare parts.
I also think that by the time 3D printing becomes truly
mainstream, it will have converged so significantly with other technologies
that we will have ceased to call it 3D printing. Yes, there will be a 3D
Printing Revolution. But more significant will be the Local Digital
Manufacturing (LDM) Revolution of which 3D printing will form the first part.
Courtesy to drupa.com
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