Why 3D printing Companies Are Making Less Money

[Brian_Krassenstein]

3D printing stocks have been slowing and stagnating, especially among the bigger players in the space, for some time now; the negative quarterly reports seem unending. By taking a look at the latest goings-on, 3DPrint.com's Brian has developed ideas that might trace back some of the slowdowns. Two major reasons seem to stand behind some of the subpar performance: fears of timing and a big increase in competition. Read the full theories behind these reasonings here: http://3dprint.com/87661/3d-printing-downturn/

[curious aardvark]

he seems to have ignored the bleeding obvious.

Many companies already have machines that do the job they want done. Why spend tens of thousands of pounds replaciing something that doesn't actually need replacing ?

I did a job for an engineering firm last year. They had a 20 yeard old cnc machine that wasn't designed to talk to a computer.
It did what they wanted it to - but while it had the ability to store programs - it was very limited. It could store 20 propgrams and then they had to delete and type it all in again when needed. A new modern cnc machine is £30,000.
All their local computer firms had taken one look and run away never to return.
I don't give up that easily :-)
It took me a few visits but it now uploads and downloads programs to the computer so they no longer have a limited storage issue.
The hardest bit was explaining how it worked to the romanian who runs the machine.

My point is that any sensible businessman won't go out and spend a huge wad of cash on new machinery if old cheap machinery can be made to do the job.

3d printing has been in the commercial sector for 30 odd years - so there are a lot of old machines still out there doing the job that's needed without anyone having to cough up huge amounts of money for new shiny machines.

A company looking to get into in house rapid prototyping for the first time is more likely to buy a cheaper used machine - or even in many cases a higher end desktop machine, than buy a brand new super expensive commercial machine.

Prices for new commercial printers don't seem to be dropping much. Where as the used market is thriving.
It's about time the manufacturers realised that they need to drop their prices.
It's called economy of scale.
Selling more units at a lower price often makes more profit than trying to sell a few units at a very high price.

Also given that most commercial machines lock you in to very expensive media - the machines themselves almost need to start being looked on as loss leaders - exactly like the 2d inkjet market.

The other thing that is effecting sales is the plethora of new fast turnaround 3d print services and bureaus.

You have to spend an awful lot of money at a print bureau to justify buying your own machine.
Most of the newer and older printer bureaus have a variety of machines and print types available that no small company could ever hope to match.

So why pay £150,000 for a full colour objet when you can get parts made on one for a fraction of the cost of owning the machine yourself.