The Top Ten Players In 3D Printing?

We're reading a curious post on EconomyWatch in which they describe the incredible future of 3D printing. In their post, they list the "Top Ten Players in the 3D Printing Industry Today". Here's their list:

 

1. 3D Systems (printers)
2. Autodesk (CAD software)
3. Desktop Factory (printer)
4. Makerbot Industries (printers)
5. Shapeways (service)
6. Bespoke Innovations (artificial limbs)
7. Sweet Onion Creations (service)
8. Freedom of Creation (3D products)
9. Contour Crafting (buildings)
10. HP and Google (printers) and (software)

 

We have a couple of problems with this list of ten. Firstly, it's actually eleven items, not ten. Secondly, Desktop Factory has been defunct for almost two years, and we haven't heard a peep from Contour Crafting for a very, very long time. It's hard to believe hey are in the top ten, erm, eleven.

 

That's the problem with this type of list: how does one rank the entries? Is it ranked by revenue? Profit? Any financial ranking would be tricky because only two manufacturers (3D Systems and Stratasys) are publicly traded and thus release their financial information. The rest are privately held and secret - but likely much smaller than the big two. 

 

If you're ranking by other factors, such as "buzz", that's even harder to quantify. Number of units? Maybe, but again these are not generally published. Importance to the industry? Again, hard to quantify. 

 

What's our list? We'd have two lists, one for big-time commercial players and another for non-profit or low-volume industry influencers. Will you get to see these lists? Sure, but not today!

 

Via EconomyWatch

3D Print Services Summary, 1Q08

We've identified many 3D printing services in previous posts. Today we'll put them all together and classify them as per our prior post on the two types of services.

Traditional (General industrial-quality and for professional usage)
ProtoCAM
MetropolitanWorks
Envizage
AlphaPrototypes
Tangible Express

QuickARC

RedEye RPM
Muur Labs
Tangerås Verksted & Støperi
Tech Workshop

Sweet Onion Creations

Consumer
FigurePrints (WarCraft avatars)
Cosmic Modelz (3D Toy Modeling)
Fabidoo (Personalized figurines)
JuJups (Picture Frames)
FabJectory (Second Life and Mii Avatars)
Ponoko (Easy building)

ZapFab (User generated models)

Is this list exhaustive? By no means – this is only the very tip of the iceberg, as we will see many more services emerge in the coming year. Many of the high-quality 3D printers manufactured this year may well end up in a service bureau like these.