Dental 3D Market Grew to $4B in 2022

SmarTech Analysis, the leading 3D printing market research firm and the sibling firm of 3DPrint.com, has released the latest iteration of one of its flagship reports, 3D Printing in Dentistry 2023: Market Study & Forecast. The SmarTech dental report is, according to the company, “the longest running dedicated research study for professionals in the dental industry” focused on AM.

The firm is therefore uniquely positioned to analyze the market from a long-term perspective. This seventh edition of SmarTech’s report on the dental market for additive manufacturing (AM) includes data on some of the industry’s most closely watched companies, including mainstays Stratasys and 3D Systems, younger veterans such as Formlabs, and startups like Desktop Metal’s Desktop Health brand. Notably, the latest report found that in 2022, the revenue for dental 3D printing grew to $4 billion, representing nearly one-third of the overall 3D printing industry. By 2031, the market research firm expects it to reach $9.7 billion.

Beyond just the hard numbers, the report’s analysis provides invaluable insight into the turning point the market currently finds itself at. In that vein, the fact that the report sheds light specifically on dental 3D printing in the post-COVID landscape means that readers might find this edition particularly useful. It is plausible to think that by 2030, the dental industry as a whole will look far more like the 3D printing market for dentistry in 2021-22, than it does like any pre-2020 version of dentistry.

As the press release announcing the publication of 3D Printing in Dentistry 2023: Market Study & Forecast puts it, “The latest edition of the report analyzes the market in the post-COVID era with acceleration of digital adoption at the clinical level and wholesale backing of 3D printing technology by dental industry giants.” And to emphasize that the report will be of interest even to those in the 3D printing industry who aren’t active in the dental market, the press release notes, “Competitive pressure in the dental 3D printing market is catalyzing a revitalization of technical development for 3D printing.”

The second point is true not only for the academics and technicians, but also, for those who are purely on the business side of things, especially business development managers and investment strategists. That is because dental is such a uniquely mature market for the 3D printing industry in terms of the present degree of commercialization of dental end-products. Just take LuxCreo’s directly 3D printed aligners and Stratasys’s directly 3D printed, full-color dentures for instance.

Thus, perhaps more so than the data for any other 3D printing market, data on dental 3D printing is likely to have implications for mass produced commercial end products in all the other verticals. This is simply due to the fact that virtually anything in the dental market has a more established history of mass commercialization than all other applications, aside from hearing aids. And the hearing aid is one product, whereas dentistry is an entire industry. For anyone interested, then, in what the broad commercial mass prodcution of all forms of 3D printed products might look like by 2030, dental is still pretty much the only game in town.

Images courtesy of SmarTech Analysis