5 Major 3D Printing Trends to Look for In 2023

The new year has begun, and it’s time to take a look at the 3D printing trends shaping the industry. Last year was again challenging, with ongoing supply chain disruptions, the war in Ukraine, and the associated rise in energy and raw material prices. It showed that reducing costs and increasing supply chain resilience remain critical – and that 3D printing can play a huge role in facing those challenges. Here are 5 trends we’ve identified that will have a huge impact on the 3D printing industry this year and beyond.

Wider range of 3D printing use cases due to increasing technology maturity

As more innovative materials arise, the technology is becoming available for more applications in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation. Companies are increasingly shifting their additive manufacturing processes from prototyping to volume production. In doing so, they use 3D printing either as a replacement for traditional manufacturing or as so-called “bridge manufacturing,” bridging the gap between supply and demand. At times when supply chain disruptions are occurring and certain parts and raw materials have immense lead times, the technology enables the rapid availability of much-needed parts. Additive manufacturing is also an optimal solution for production ramp-up and spare parts for older products.

Service bureaus and 3D printing platforms will play an important role in scaling the business and fulfilling all application needs in 2023. They make it easy to shift from one material and technology to another, and they lower the risk and cost of implementing your own infrastructure.

The rise of the digital supply chain

The increasing use of 3D printing is driving the need for streamlined processes that improve efficiency and cut costs. In 2023, the trend points toward more automated and integrated AM workflows that combine production and supply chain, connecting every player in the 3D printing market – software providers, print farms, customers, and post-processing and material specialists.

3D printing part identification software will become increasingly common for quickly evaluating printability across a large list of parts. Digital warehousing platforms will let companies manage parts more efficiently across their whole lifecycle. On one side, companies can eliminate warehousing and start producing on demand; on the other, they can order parts directly through an integrated or connected ordering system and have them produced decentrally. Altogether, a digital supply chain built on additive manufacturing leads to far more transparency, sustainability, flexibility, and efficiency.

Quality assurance as the foundation of industrial 3D printing

Another emerging trend that comes with the industrial use of additive manufacturing is the rollout of secure processes, certified materials, and suitable technologies. 3D printing has to guarantee process repeatability, and every part has to meet the same quality requirements.

That’s why we introduced RSure, our quality assurance module, on Replique’s end-to-end 3D printing platform. The tool lets OEMs digitally define quality requirements and an inspection process (dimensions, photo documentation, and so on) that 3D printing service providers must complete before shipping the part. Production information for every part produced is stored centrally on the platform as part of its “digital twin,” enabling seamless part documentation and letting a decentralized 3D printing platform operate at industrial scale.

To further improve the stability of AM processes, we also see an emerging trend toward using AI to control digital manufacturing. AI will help monitor, collect, and analyze machine data in situ to catch and fix errors, enabling more reliable and repeatable AM processes.

Sustainability in additive manufacturing

The trend toward greater sustainability will continue to shape 2023 and the innovations that come with it. AM is becoming a more dominant technology for hitting sustainability goals, significantly cutting the CO2 footprint of parts in several ways:

• No overproduction – only the parts actually needed get produced on demand
• No need to scrap products over missing spare parts
• Reduced transportation effort

The ability to redesign parts to be lighter and stronger will also positively affect 3D printing’s sustainability, as more use cases get developed specifically for the technology in the years ahead. We also see a trend toward more sustainable materials, such as recyclable and bio-derived options. Service providers will need to make these positive impacts more measurable through software in 2023.

Altogether, these sustainability benefits also meet rising end-customer expectations, who are starting to demand product sustainability – visible, for instance, in the current “Right to Repair” movement, which calls for repairable products and spare parts across a product’s entire life.

Metal 3D printing as a rising trend

Looking at material and technology trends for 2023, we see, above all, growing use of metal 3D printing. It enables the production of complex metal parts with far less waste and lower cost compared to conventional manufacturing. Metal polymers in particular have found their way into the market and will keep growing through 2023, opening up the option to manufacture metal parts using filaments. These filaments contain metal and polymer particles, with the polymer particles removed afterward through debinding and sintering, using heat.

Printing with metal filaments currently comes with design limitations and suits smaller parts with fairly simple geometries. But for parts that fit that profile, metal filaments are a strong alternative to conventional metal AM technologies like SLM – especially on cost grounds.

At Replique, we’ve already put the technology to use, including a collaboration with Alstom, a global leader in green and smart mobility. There, for the first time, we qualified and produced a visible metal part for additive serial manufacturing. The parts are made from Ultrafuse 316L stainless steel using metal FDM technology – a cost-effective, fast solution. Alstom’s door stopper, used to divide first and second class on a train, was qualified for serial production and printed within just 6 weeks.

Conclusion: a glance at the future of 3D printing

Although times remain uncertain in 2023, we’re confident that 3D printing will shape the global production market in a positive direction – with more sustainability, more resilience, and lower costs. But to truly reach industrial status, the technology needs standardized processes and assured quality, including ways to track and control print quality. We see a strong trend toward digital processes that connect and streamline everything from selecting, storing, and ordering to tracking parts through 3D printing, in service of exactly that goal.