Consider a trio of recent market forecasts from SmarTech, Infiniti Research Ltd. and Technavio; the first covers additive manufacturing with metal powders, while the second and third focus on machining centers.
Prospects for Additive Manufacturing with Metal Powders
“[T]he conversation for widespread metal additive manufacturing is beginning to shift from ‘when?’ to ‘where?’—a question that reflects an evolution away from just tactical manufacturing of low-volume components and prototypes and into addressing serial production opportunities and integration into established manufacturing environments.”
The report includes analyses of:
- Opportunities for metal powder suppliers
- The evolution of metal powder supply chains to meet the needs of evolving additive manufacturing markets
- Existing and emerging metal additive manufacturing technologies
- Metal-oriented 3D printing services
- End user industries and applications that are adopting metal printing
Despite potential bottlenecks for metal additive manufacturing, the report seems generally optimistic about the technology’s prospects. This enthusiasm is reflected in similar reports, such as this one from Infiniti Research Ltd., which predicts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 20 percent for the metal additive manufacturing market from now until 2020.
Those projects are in keeping with the latest Wohlers Report, which set the CAGR of the total additive manufacturing market in 2015 at 25.9 percent, down from the 33.8-percent CAGR for the past three years.
Prospects for Traditional Machining
According to the Infiniti report, automation will be a key trend in market growth, particularly in light of the trade-offs between the upfront costs of implementing automation and the long-term savings that result from doing so.
The report identifies the automotive industry as accounting for more than 41 percent of the total market share of machining centers in 2015. Geographically, the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) dominated the machining center market, with the region accounting for 42 percent of the total market share. The report predicts that this dominance will continue through 2020.
Not surprisingly, the Technavio report draws similar conclusions. “Low-cost manufacturing opportunities in APAC have compelled many companies across industries to shift their manufacturing bases to this region,” said Gaurav Mohindru, a lead engineering tools research expert from Technavio.
“Rising automotive production in Thailand and initiatives like Make in India have made APAC the focal point of global manufacturing. Therefore, Technavio expects this region to dominate the global market in manufacturing and in turn, the machining centers market,” Mohindru added.
The Technavio report also characterizes APAC as dominating the market with a share of over 40 percent, whereas the Americas account for only 28 percent. According to the report, India is the next major automotive market, with 23.9 million units sold in 2016 Q1 compared to 23.3 million units sold during the same period in 2014.
Growth in Additive Manufacturing and Machining Centers
Based on these reports, we can infer that the metal additive manufacturing market is growing at nearly five times the rate of the machining center market. Does this mean that metal additive manufacturing is on its way to replacing subtractive machining centers?
Not necessarily.
A broader perspective may help to shed some light on this matter. Wohlers sets the current value of the additive manufacturing market—which includes plastics and composite materials as well as metal—at approximately USD$5.2 billion. In contrast, the Freedonia World Machine Tools report predicts the total value of the machine tools market to be $181 billion by 2019.
Although machining centers make up a relatively small portion of the machine tool market (less than $5 billion, according to Infiniti), the total market size highlights the implausibility of claims that additive manufacturing will disrupt traditional machining.
That being said, the explosive growth of the additive manufacturing market in conjunction with its proportionality to the machining center market does suggest that metal additive manufacturing could very well become a legitimate competitor to multi-axis machining within the next decade.
Perhaps that’s why major players in machining are exploring hybrid additive technologies.