3D printing is known as a technology mainly used to rapidly produce prototypes of products. But now, it is increasingly also used to mass-manufacture functional parts. What are the reasons for this development?
As you said, 3D prototyping has been around for a while, almost three decades now. The production of functional parts started maybe five or six years ago, and there are several reasons for this. First, there is the design freedom that additive manufacturing offers. The ability to produce light-weight parts, for example, is a huge advantage in the aerospace industry. The second reason is that 3D printing eliminates or at least drastically reduces tooling costs. You don’t need large upfront investments such as in injection molding, and this made 3D printing interesting for production runs with smaller lot sizes. These two factors led to an increase in demand for 3D printers, which started a virtuous cycle. New producers of 3D printers entered the market, such as HP, Carbon3D, Desktop Metal, and VELO3D. The investments in this space rose. GE bought two 3D printing companies for around USD 1.4 billion. Desktop metal, another supplier of 3D printers, raised more than USD 400 million. With all these new entrants, the virtuous loop continued: better printers led to more applications, and the suppliers of printing materials such as BASF, Henkel, and Evonik in the plastic space and names such as Metalpine, Kymera, and 5N Plus in the metal space started to invest as well, which further reduced the cost of printed parts.

So this was simply about technology improving?
There is another critical reason, which is the rising importance of distributed manufacturing and micro-factories. The first reason for this is that manufacturers want to reduce their dependence on far-away suppliers and supply chains that span the globe, which can easily be disrupted by global events or catastrophes like a global pandemic; and second, that the OEMs and MRO companies need to move toward on-demand parts supply models, closer to their end customers.

3YOURMIND’s software enables your customers to identify which parts to print and to make their production more efficient. What are the use cases you can mention?
There are a lot of different use cases in various industries. Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway company, for example, uses 3D printing extensively for the production of spare parts. Then there are mascara brushes that are printed. An impressive automation project is underway at BMW. The Polyline lighthouse project aims to establish a single, seamless production line for the production of end-use AM parts in laser sintering technology. BMW already uses printed parts in the mini and i8 models.

And how does your software help such clients?
Due to advantages related to supply chain resilience and design freedom, it is clear that introducing additives into the production process is a must for companies who want to stay competitive. On the other hand, it is not enough to buy machines without a plan. A thought-through strategy is needed.

Our technology enables companies to make the right data-driven decision about parts that should be digitized and produced additively. Our software then calculates the business model of switching to additive and suggests the right materials, production processes, or suitable suppliers. We also show which parts should not be produced additively but rather conventionally.

Furthermore, many of our clients have different production facilities already. Some locations print metal parts. Others are non-metal or a mix of both. Often, they don’t want only to print parts themselves but have a network of 3D printing service providers they work with. Such a setup has an inherent complexity, and it isn’t easy to have a clear overview of what capacity is where and which supplier can deliver parts how fast at which price. Our software brings the needed transparency and enables the purchasing department to optimize their decisions. At the same time, the in-house production becomes a lot more efficient thanks to our software tools.

How fast does your market grow?
The market for 3D printers sold for prototyping used to have yearly growth rates of around 20% to 30%. It is reasonable to expect that the machine sales growth rate will increase as new parts will be qualified for AM serial production. Some of our customers do not have AM machines but want to develop a strategy to integrate 3D Printing into their production process. The increased need for such strategies and the growing number of 3D Printers expands our market. We have developed a value-based pricing model that takes the number of users, printers, and sites of a customer and the savings and efficiency gains into account.

How has the pandemic changed your outlook?
Prior to the crisis, there were still a lot of industries that didn’t make use of 3D printing, and the lockdowns of economies have heightened their awareness of supply chain risks. As a result, we’ve gained major traction in different new industries, for example, the energy sector. Missing parts can lead to costly downtimes and 3D printing can help prevent them. There is also a fast-growing interest from logistics firms, and we’re starting to partner with some key players in the industry. The latest are right now shifting their business models from simple physical supply flows to complex digital and physical mixed threads. Smart digital warehouses are real, and we enable these companies to manage them and to create on-demand parts production models for their customers. Both logistics companies and we are in the just-in-time business. The end customer cares about getting her part “on time, in full”, they don’t care if that part comes out of a warehouse or a printer. The pandemic made 2020 a difficult year for many people and companies but also promoted digital transformation in an unprecedented way, and this gives us the opportunity to build more agile and sustainable production models.