CONTEXT l 30 years of 3D Printer Shipments in 30 seconds

The 3D printer market* is often thought of as a single cohesive entity. Yet the reality is much different as you’ll see from this unique high-level view of industry trends over the past three decades.

ASTM International defines seven core types of additive manufacturing machines (aka 3D printers). Even within these types there are various vendor-specific variants, some of which can process a range of materials. By revenue sales, machines printing polymers (plastics) are most popular, followed by those printing metals.

Printer hardware prices range from a few hundred to millions of dollars. And you’ll also find a huge variety of sizes – with some as small as a PC inkjet printer and others as large as a warehouse.

The aggregate analysis shown here encompasses all of these printer types sorted by new units shipped per quarter multiplied by their system price (aka System Revenues). Using this measure, the rise in revenues of metal 3D printers over the past decade is immediately noticeable.

*Includes period-by-period, non-cumulative, global shipments of new, finished-good printers in all four CONTEXT price-class groupings; PERSONAL (<$2.5K), PROFESSIONAL ($2.5K-$20K), DESIGN ($20K-$100K) and INDUSTRIAL ($100K+). Personal DIY Kits not included.

Source: CONTEXT