 Hi, I'm John Harrop. I'm an analyst with the market research company ID TechX. I'm specializing in 3D printing This is an example of one of the slides I've been working on lately So we've got some market research information here being visualized and we're using machine learning algorithms to dive into it And try to improve the way we can view the data and information we can squeeze out of it And this is my so it says SLA jet sound. What is that? I can go into detail These are different printing processes and here along the bottom We've got the price on a log scale and at the top We've got the speed of the printer on a log scale and so you can see immediately that you can get cheap low-speed printers So for example, thermoplastic extrusion, then you've got stereo lithography We've got jetting technologies and SLS is the best plastic style printer at the moment And then up here you can see we've got metal printers So if you want a metal printer, there's no such thing as a cheap one at the moment But you can immediately see all of the all of this how it breaks down on the graph and Obviously that helps you to identify any unmet needs in the market by looking at these graphics. Are you 3D printer experts? Yeah, yeah, we've been doing it. I've been looking at 3D printing for years now. I've got my own 3D printers at home I've been building them and stripping them down and rebuilding them writing all the software from scratch and just generally having fun But I also enjoy following all of the markets around 3D printing So there's lots of attention with 3D printers at every conference. Why are people interested in 3D printing? So it's revolutionizing the way that we manufacture many different goods It's been used for prototyping primarily for the past 20 almost 30 years And now it's there's been a shift and the aerospace for example have started manufacturing critical flight critical production components that are going to be flying around in commercial airliners in two years And they're printing those directly in metal. It's not yet in the airplanes They're printing them now. They're building them now and they're going to be going into the aeroplanes that are being produced next year And they should be flying the year after So so who are you? Oh, I'm Rachel Gordon. I'm also a technology analyst at ID Tech X I also specialize in 3D printing and because of my background I tend to focus more on the materials side so following kind of the chemical suppliers through to the materials formulators and then What sort of technologies the materials are appropriate with and who uses which materials and what they can be used for markets surrounding that So which exhibitors are going to be here for the this time we have airwolf who are company from Los Angeles? We're very pleased to have them. They're doing a lot of interesting work producing cheaper printers But they can use high-end materials. They have a high temperature Thermoplastic extrusion print head more than all their competitors pretty much and they're based down in Los Angeles We also have 3D Ponyx coming from Ottawa in Canada who are demonstrating an interesting Application of 3D printing. They're actually print 3d printing hydroponics to grow plants and a variety of other companies coming along with Well, we've got Boeing lecturing and Bosch lecturing on the work that they're doing Boeing are obviously a major end-user aerospace have been driving 3d printing for years now and Bosch have a subsidiary called Dremel who are quite famous among power tool people anybody who's got these Dremel rotary tool at home Should know this they've just released this year their first 3d printer So they're doing selling 3d printers is a rebranded flash for watch from China and they're providing great support with that It's getting extremely good reviews in the marketplace. So I'll be interested to meet the guys from Bosch and Boeing here So in the last couple years is more and more on the Kickstarter's You know like a 3d printer in projects getting the price down But it's it's it's not going to just stay at making a prototyping, right? It's going to get to the next level Yeah, the cheap printers are sorry Printers are great for prototyping still They're readily available at moment lots more coming on Kickstarter all the time 29 new projects this year on Kickstarter The total funding raised on Kickstarter just for 3d printer projects is now almost 20 million dollars And so this thing keeps evolving But at the same time the high-end equipment for aerospace for example will cost you the best part of the million dollars still and Rachel's our expert on materials so she can tell you about the materials side which material well the cheap printers that you talked about Kind of on Kickstarter use them a plastics and which is fine for prototyping making kind of cheap plastic objects That you'd use around your house And that's kind of what the hobbyists use what's used in schools. You can make Legos Yeah Yeah, you can make Lego But if you wanted to do if you wanted to build a critical part for aerospace You're not going to make it our plastic you're going to make it a metal you're going to need a metal printer Yeah, also in like orthopedics and things like that. That's all metal printing And so very much depending on the final properties you want for your final product You have to use a different material and that means you have to use a different 3d printing technology So what's the thermal plastics? Okay, is it like you heat it up it melts or yes exactly It's the type of plastic that when you heat it melts So you can get your spool of filament and you can melt it pass it through your printer and print in a kind of liquid state And then let it solidify So it's just the way the technology works means you need to use a thermal plastic Is it possible to have 3d printers with many different materials? That is a kind of pretty major unmet need in the market at the moment There are a few printers that are just emerging really where you can jet like maybe a couple of materials Maybe two or three and so you can then mix them and kind of tailor the properties Maybe have a couple of different plastics in the same object, but Multimaterial on a big scale and being able to print like metals and plastics in the same object is something that we don't really see yet So when people see a 3d printer immediately, maybe they imagine oh, we're gonna be able to print everything But it's not quite that yet, right? It's not there yet But I don't see any reason in the long term long term being more like 50 years here That we couldn't get closer to a Star Trek style replicator where you could manufacture very complicated objects People are increasingly interested in functional materials for example So the possibility of printing not just in for example metals and plastics as conductors and insulators But also print semiconductors to try to print sensors or actuators and so on and so forth So the sky is the limit really, but it's very much in the lab for anything except for the simplest mechanical components at the moment So everybody's gonna have a fab at home. You can print your arm processors I hope so That'd be nice