There have been a series of materials providers exiting the 3D print space. What’s that all about?
Before we go too further, there are two types of companies involved. There are the massive chemical companies that design the materials, and secondly there are companies that take those materials and convert them into forms useful on 3D printers. For example, Mitsubishi resin pellets might be used by a filament manufacturer to produce spools of material.
Over the past several years a series of chemical companies announced ventures into the 3D print space to provide materials. In general this was a good thing, as each chemical company has a vast portfolio of chemical formulas for their plastic products. Some of these would be suitable for 3D printing, and the thought was that this could open up many more materials. More materials means more applications, and that’s a good thing.
However, there have been announcements of withdrawal from the 3D print space by several companies of both types:
- Kimya (Armor Group) ceased all 3D printing filament production and shut down its facility in France due to market downturn and economic challenges.
- Braskem shut down Xtellar (Braskem’s 3D Printing Division), ending its production of polypropylene (PP) filaments, pellets, and PBF powders.
- Asahi Kasei Plastics North America ended its 3D printing filament production after a strategic review.
- BASF exited the 3D printing industry by spinning off its Forward AM division into an independent company under new ownership, which then went insolvent.
After optimistic starts, it is disappointing to see these companies depart, particularly BASF. BASF was one of the first big chemical companies to get deeply involved in 3D print technology. At one point, you couldn’t look left or right in the 3D print space without seeing BASF.
All of these big companies entered the market with long-term intentions to capitalize on a growing 3D print industry. That not really happened. Let me explain.
The early days of 3D printing were focused almost exclusively on rapid prototyping, where a few iterations of parts were produced. That was sufficient to sustain a small 3D print industry composed of device manufacturers and materials providers.
However, the real money was in manufacturing. Instead of producing a few parts as in prototyping, manufacturing produces millions of parts at a far larger scale.
Years ago there were many hopes of 3D print technology taking a healthy bite of the massive manufacturing market. This meant that manufacturers would have to adopt 3D print technology in a significant way.
This has actually happened in certain industries with specific 3D print technologies. The major growth is happening in aerospace, where production parts can be made more lightweight. That creates a significant advantage for manufacturers, and although it’s taken many years, is being adopted throughout that market.
But most of that growth is with metal 3D printing, as those production parts are the ones that most benefit from lightweighting. The growth of polymer production parts has been slower.
And that leads to the decisions made by the chemical companies: they produce polymers, not metals, so the biggest growth is not applicable to their businesses.
Some of those companies have decided to give up, at least for now.
My thought is that the 3D print technologies that were used to establish rapid prototyping have been inappropriately applied to larger scale manufacturing. They were never designed for that purpose, and that’s why they haven’t really been adopted. This is also why many venture capital-fed 3D printer manufacturers are having a hard time: they can’t expand significantly into manufacturing as promised.
At some point new 3D print technologies will address manufacturing in an effective manner, and then we may see some of these chemical companies return to the market.
