Since 2008 3D printing technology patents expire and open. The past five years, 3D printers has gone from costly industrial equipment, to a tool accessible to hobbyists and DIY amateurs; and they’re fairly inexpensive now you only need a few hundred dollars to get cheap ABS extruder models. While owned by 3D systems, the Selective Laser Sintering, SLS technology patent will expire in February 2014, this is by far the lowest-cost 3D technology. Nowadays 3D technology is no longer an abstruse technology, heating up inter-industry competition.
FDM (Fused Depoition Modeling) printers appeared after an explosive growth when the patent expired, so MakerBot Industries LLC became a well-known desktop 3D printer manufacturer, Stratasys Ltd. purchased the rights to MaketBot technology, spending a whopping $ 403 million in the acquisition process. Before, the expiration of the patent 3D printers cost upwards of $ 14,000, acquiring a basic 3D printer now will run you just a few hundred. Unfortunately, Cheap 3D desktop printer still can’t print out mass production molds, so they cannot replace traditional manufacturing.
But, when the laser sintering technology patent expires, expected changes may occur, due to the very high resolution of this technique, printed products can be sold directly. Will be more used in various industries.
Now even the big traditional printer companies like Hewlett Packard, also see the potential of 3D printing. At the Canalys Channels Forum meeting held in 2013, in Bangkok, HP announced it is working on a 3D printer, and is expected to be ready in middle of 2014; will this be a new breakthrough in the quality of 3D printing? At present, we can see on the Internet that many companies are frantically developing 3D printer technology, jumping on the already crowded bandwagon. You’ll soon see the 3D industry entering the consolidation phase. Let us wait and see the growth of the 3D printing industry in 2014.
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