I've had quite a few people argue with me that it's Stratasys and 3DS

3D Printing
,
1

I’ve had quite a few people argue with me that it’s Stratasys and 3DS driving 3D printing forward. I’ve only got one thing to say to them: “nuh uh!”
http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160406-desktop-3d-printer-sales-up-lead-global-market-as-industrial-3d-printer-shipments-drop.html

2

It depends what you mean by “driving 3D printing forward.”

3

What’s happening in desktop is the commoditization of the hardware, It’s cutting into kit builders as now the scale is such that it’s less expensive to get a lower end complete machine. Regardless of the spin they put on 22% growth (witch is still pretty good), over the last few years growth in the segment has been well into triple digits, What is happening is the growth in desktop is slowing considerably and consolidating . something that press release doesn’t mention. What’s happened is that the low end of the market has matured.

Driving the market doesn’t mean selling the most units. In terms of revenue and technology the big players, and I’d include Carbon and Form in that, account for far more revenue, better margins and technological advances. The unit growth is in desktop but the margin growth and tech advances are in commercial machines. Boeing, NIke, SpaceX or GM aren’t using import desktop machines to produce parts. While there may be some in the R&D labs, actual production runs are being are still the domain of basically two companies.

4

As with any marketing hypes, it is important to realise that each industry will have multiple metrics. In this article, I see unit shipment and printer revenue, both useful ones. Then total build capability could be another for 3D printing. At some point, replacement rate will become meaningful. And so on.

5

@dstevens_lv , the only applicable metric I’m concerned with is mindshare. If you’re selling millions of dollars of machines to Lockheed Martin, and nobody knows about your tech otherwise, is it really a success? Only if you use money as your metric of success. I don’t. Most of the time I end up despising and distancing myself as far away from the people who do.

Getting more people into STE(A)M/Tech fields is a far more noble goal than making millions of dollars. Having an arena which hundreds if not thousands of companies can compete on equal footing, also a far more noble goal. Stratasys and 3DS simply locks those behind golden gates which nobody is allowed to open unless they have the requisite treasure chest.