R&D Profiles of Leading 3D Printing Companies
It is important to analyze the level of the R&D occurring at the leading 3D printer manufacturers to help understand the technology commitment and future growth prospects of the 3D printing industry.
A table providing the last three years per capita R&D for eight companies’ public reporting purposes is presented below:
Some conclusions from the eight-company data for Renishaw, Stratasys, 3D Systems, Materialise, Organovo, HP, Inc., ExOne, and Arcam are as follows.
- This is an industry with a large commitment to R&D with three-year average year spend of $138 million for all eight companies
- The pure 3D printer manufacturers are engineering/design intensive since the average company per capita annual R&D spend is $45,149
- Organovo, the organ printing company, has particularly large per capita numbers and very high year over year R&D growth but to date has a small employee count that only slightly impacts the overall data results.
- Arcam, along with Concept Laser, has recently been acquired by GE Additive. These acquisitions alone will greatly increase commercial R&D applications related to GE’s internal businesses particularly aircraft components and medical equipment and perhaps oil and gas equipment. GE has disclosed they have spent over $1.5 billion in 3D printing related investments.
This table only reflects the R&D investment of large commercial 3D printer manufacturers. Other 3D printer or R&D investors include:
- Foreign, US Federal and Local Government
- Universities
- Software Developers
- Material Suppliers
- Designers & End Users
- Numerous privately held 3D printer manufacturers, many of which have large R&D budgets, including Desktop Metal, Markforged, and Carbon.
Other major commercial companies with 3D printing R&D expenses include Canon and Epson but we are unable to separate their 3D printer R&D from with 2D printer R&D. The large ongoing investment in 3D printing R&D is going to enable 3D printing end users to benefit from a continuing stream of new and improved 3D printer products.
Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.
Charles Goulding & Tricia Genova of R&D Tax Savers discuss 3D printing R&D.
You May Also Like
AZO and AddUp Partner to Automate Powder Handling for Metal 3D Printing
Metal powders are some of the most finicky materials in the 3D printing industry in that, not only do the metal particles require a high level of consistency, sphericity, and...
AMUG 2021: DyeMansion and Stratasys to Deliver Total Solution for 3D Printing and Finishing SAF Parts
As a new powder bed fusion process, Stratasys’s new selective absorption fusion (SAF) technology promises to deliver high-volume parts at attractive prices. Upon announcing its first SAF system alongside two...
How 3D Printing Lasers Differ from Other Lasers
3D laser printing has been a point of focus recently, with many people arguing that it has more precision than other manufacturing techniques. Let’s look at the core differences between...
Hiperbaric and Aenium allied to revolutionize AM and HIP R&D
The joint use of Additive Manufacturing and HIP technology makes it possible to develop improved metal components, thanks to the optimization of their designs, the implementation of more efficient processes...
Services & Data
Printer & Scanner Price QuotesUpload your 3D Models and get them printed quickly and efficiently.
