The absence of scaffolding could prove crucial to producing “premium” organs as close as possible to native organs. The technology can only 3D print 2-3cm organ pieces at a time.

The LFS for processing long glass fiber-reinforced materials reliably maintains the fiber length and ensures uniform distribution of the fibres in the melt. Picture: Engel

This company is for patient investors, counting on this technology to become more mainstream and improve to the point where it can build full organs at once in one block.

Xometry is an AI-enabled marketplace for industrial manufacturing. Its goal is to create a massive and liquid marketplace for industrial components and on-demand design. This is known as a very inefficient market, with a lot of time consumed by finding vendors and then requesting and comparing quotes.

Proto Labs' main selling point is very quick lead time, up to just 1 day to receive the freshly ordered parts. This makes it an excellent partner for prototyping or for parts needing to be produced in small volumes, such as urgent repairs, maintenance of rare equipment, or unique and advanced equipment like space probes.

Still, investors will need to be cautious of the company's cash position and expect some level of dilution by new capital raise at some point in the future.

Voxeljet is a small German manufacturer of 3D printers. Voxeljet technology relies on “binder/ink jetting,” a process that is able to quickly produce parts, allowing for larger production batches and more diverse materials. It also allows to mix 3D printing and traditional manufacturing methods like casting.

This makes the stock a good pick for investors uninterested in profitless growth and looking for a smaller, safer stock pick. They will nevertheless be cautious that the bigger players do not manage in the long run to take away market share from Materialise.

The company's main business comes from injection molding and CNC machining, but with a quickly growing 3D printing activity as well.

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Part of the success of Velo3D comes from proprietary advanced alloys, like HASTELLOY C22 (chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, and iron) or GRCop-42 (copper/chromium/niobium), offering unique features for rocket engines or chemical production.

While not a pure play on 3D printing, the flexibility of Xometry's quotes system makes it a prime candidate for benefiting from more widespread adoption of 3D printing and its flexible design capabilities. The company is now looking to acquire the scale and international reach to become the “Amazon of manufacturing,” and if the recent growth can be sustained, it could well achieve that.

3D Systems can print 130 materials, producing over a million parts daily. 64% of revenues are recurring (material, software subscription, etc…).

The screw, non-return valve and barrel massively influence the melt quality and repeatability of the injection molding process as well as the lifespan and cost-effectiveness of the injection molding machine. As a provider of tailor-made, integrated system solutions, Engel also adapts the plasticizing unit to the specific requirements of the respective application.

Xometry's AI allows for instant pricing and receiving quotes in seconds (instead of days doing it alone), as well as 3D geometry and feature recognition, enhancing the quotes' accuracy and pricing. It also offers a payment system for suppliers to manage their cash flow.

Where Xometry is more generalist and targets the whole manufacturing industry, Proto Labs is a more established player with direct control over most of its manufacturing capacity. This should help it stay strong in its prototyping and small-batch manufacturing niche, where speed, quality, and precision are the most important factors above price.

Proto Labs is a pioneer in digital manufacturing, launched in 1999. It combines in-house manufacturing capacities (1 million square feet of factories) and a growing network of manufacturing partners.

Its specialization in advanced composite is the company's main strength, with a clear goal to change manufacturing practices and see many parts moving away from metal and using lighter, more advanced materials.

This sector also became extremely popular in 2013-2014, leading to a high valuation that subsequently crashed. 10 years later, the sector is now more mature and becoming more and more part of everyday industrial processes. You can read more about 3D printing applications in our dedicated article as well.

No matter the result of the merger, Desktop Metal has recently launched a $100m cost reduction program. It is still loss-making and has relied on selling convertible bonds to make ends meet.

Desktop Metal is competing with 3D Systems for a merger with Stratasys. Would that fail? It might end up much smaller than the resulting 3D + Stratasys and potentially struggle to achieve the right scale.

The company's strongest position is in medical, especially footwear, eyewear, and dental. In these segments, it competed efficiently with the larger 3D companies and grew its medical revenues by 20% year-to-year in Q2 2023. It also grew its EBITDA by 12.2%.

Most additive manufacturing companies focus on metal and plastic, with an eye for complex mechanical parts. Nano Dimension is instead focused on 3D-printed electronics. This includes very specialized technologies like conductive or dielectric inks & ceramics.

So investors in Voxeljet can see it as a bet of additive manufacturing finding its place inside the traditional manufacturing supply chain but not replacing it entirely. And calculating that at the recent low stock price, with a very low price-to-sales ratio of 0.36, Voxeljet's financial issues are already priced in.

The company is active in additive manufacturing but also CNC machining cutting. It is active in multiple industries, including aerospace, medical, automotive, industrial, government agencies (including defense), and robotics.

Engel's response to the increasing requirements of the automotive industry in particular, and the increasing use of fibre-reinforced materials, takes the form of two new screws – the PFS (Physical Foaming Screw) and the LFS (Long Glass Fibre Screw).

More than 1/3 of the company's revenues come from the space sector (with NASA a new customer in Q2 2023), with the rest being made in most contract manufacturing and automotive.

It is also a company with a strong component of healthcare, making up 39% of revenues, much higher than comparable 3D systems or Desktop Metal. Materialise is doing most of its business in Europe, followed by the Americas.

Cyfuse is, for now, not profitable (after a brief period of profit in 2021) but is already registering a few million dollars in revenues.

Proto Labs has almost quadrupled its revenues since its 2013 IPO, for a total of $488M in 2022. The company's customer base is diversified, with the main industries being medical, electronics, and aerospace.

For ages, the way to manufacture metal or plastic items has relied on forging or molding technologies. In recent years, an entirely new concept emerged: 3D printing (also called additive manufacturing).

The previous solution was a single flighted 3-zone screw with a bolt-on long glass-fiber (LGF) mixing head. With the demand for injection molding machines for processing long glass fiber-reinforced plastic in rod granule form on the rise, Engel decided to manufacture the screw and mixing head from a single piece and to further optimise the screw geometry. The newly developed LFS offers maximum plasticizing consistency when processing rod granules and reduces fiber breakage. In order to ensure superior distribution of the fiber bundles in the product, the screw geometry was also optimised. Highly effective flight-welding gives the screw the required wear- and corrosion-resistance.

A newcomer in the industry, Velo3D has achieved impressive results in the space industry and advanced metal 3D printing. It might be a strong beneficiary of the growing new space race between the US and China and the growing space private sector.

While impressive technically, Voxeljet's financial performances are less so, with a massive net income loss in Q2 2023 of $3.6M on revenue of $6.8M. This has weighed heavily on the stock price, as the company is expected to raise more money through debt or selling shares.

Desktop Metal is another large 3D printing leader, with 650+ patents, 250+ possible materials, and 6,000 customers. One of its key centers of focus has been metal 3D printing, a target long sought after by the 3D printing industry.

It targets 4 segments: articulations, liver, nerve, and blood vessels.  It could also be used to create “training” organs for surgeons, helping them learn without risking a patient's life. This is likely the first market reachable for Cyfuse, as well as biomedical researchers needing testing on part of organs instead of cell cultures.

3D Systems has recently announced the proposal for a merger with its competitor Stratasys. This would put 3D Systems much ahead of its closest competitor, Desktop Metal, also competing for Stratasys. In the case of a merger failure (you can read more about the latest news here), investors will need to re-evaluate which of Desktop Metal or 3D Systems ends up in the best competitive position.

Stephen has been with PlasticsToday and its preceding publications Modern Plastics and Injection Molding since 1992, throughout this time based in the Asia Pacific region, including stints in Japan, Australia, and his current location Singapore. His current beat focuses on automotive. Stephen is an avid folding bicycle rider, often taking his bike on overseas business trips, and is a proud dachshund owner.

The company is still early, with negative EBITDA and net income. It has been improving its gross margin quickly but might still need some extra cash injection before reaching the scale it needs to be cash flow positive.

Nano Dimension is active in aerospace, automotive electronics, and other sectors.  The company has grown its revenues by 258% CAGR since 2020, or a 12x growth. Part of this growth was driven by a series of acquisitions since 2021, bringing multiple electronic 3D printing technologies under the same roof.

It is also working on a 3D bioprinting technology, which could be used to create synthetic organs, with a target for 2026 for the human trial in lung transplant. The addressable market is estimated at $4B.

The requirements placed on plasticizing units are continuing to grow. “This is driven, among other things, by the on-going substitution of traditional technical materials, which generates considerable increases in the performance of polymer materials,” reports Günther Klammer, head of the Plasticising Systems division at Engel. “We ensure that even new materials can be processed even faster and to even higher quality standards despite what are in part increasing stresses on mechanical components.” The keys to this are, on the one hand, continuous investment in new machining technologies and, on the other, splitting the screw portfolio in order to offer the best possible solution for every material execution.

This technology is expected to be more and more adopted by the industry. Research reports envision additive manufacturing to maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% and boast a market size in excess of $77B. Ark Invest even declared that “3D printing will be a $500 billion market opportunity”.

The PFS was developed specifically for structural foam molding. In conjunction with a new material design, the new screw geometry ensures even better homogenisation of the gas-loaded melt and increases both productivity and the screw service life wherever fibre-reinforced polymers are used. A victory injection molding machine equipped with the new PFS will produce highly decorated, three-dimensionally complex parts at Engel's stand during K 2019. The application combines MuCell structural foam molding from Trexel with the roll-to-roll in-mold decoration (IMD) process.

While competitors are focused on growth, and as many materials and offers as possible, Materialise has instead focused on profitability and smaller niches like medical products and software.

Investors in Desktop Metal will be hoping for a turnaround in profitability, potentially driven by a merger with Stratasys. They will also want to pay close attention to financial data and cash available.

It also can produce larger components, with Voxeljet having achieved the largest single-piece titanium casting in the world manufactured using 3D printing (hypersonic grid fin) and the world's largest 3D printer for offshore wind applications.

The Japanese company was founded in 2010 and started selling 3D printers to researchers in 2013. What is unique about Cyfuse is that its 3D printers are printing not with ink, metal, or composite but with living cells.

The company derived a bit more than half of its revenues from the sale of 3D printers and the rest from “services,” where Voxeljet directly printed parts after receiving an order. This creates a sales funnel for Voxeljet, where 90% of customers start ordering services before buying a 3D printer to produce directly in-house.

Materialise is a 3D printer with a strong software component, with its ranking as #1 among additive manufacturing (3D printing) software.

Even in the case of a failure of merger with Stratasys, it is likely that the 3D market will be dominated by the 2 leaders, 3D Systems and Desktop Metal. With the market growing quickly, it is likely that both companies can thrive and take over more of the industrial supply chain equipment market, especially in the context of “re-shoring” industries closer to home and out of China.

The merger with EnvisionTEC also helped Desktop Metal to develop its Desktop Health 3D printer. It is more of a scaffold printer than a full cell/organ 3D printer, but if bioprinting turns out to permanently require hydrogel or other polymers as a scaffold, this will be a strong technological advantage for Desktop Health.

So this is as much a biotech company as a 3D printing company, with a very ambitious goal and a massive addressable market if it can improve its technology to “print” full organs on demand.

Recently, the company has been at the center of a battle for control between the current management and the asset management firm Murchinson. Management claims that Murchinson’s intention is to acquire the company at a discount and liquidate the company to “liquidate its cash assets.” The situation could be resolved soon, but until then, investors might want to wait and see that the company will continue to innovate in 3D printing instead of being liquidated.

The mix between 3D printing and traditional manufacturing allows for drastically reduced costs and quicker production while still allowing for the advanced designs of 3D printing.

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Jonathan is a former biochemist researcher who worked in genetic analysis and clinical trials. He is now a stock analyst and finance writer with a focus on innovation, market cycles and geopolitics in his publication 'The Eurasian Century".

Its focus is producing tissues and organs without any artificial scaffolding, only the cells themselves, through its S-Spike platform, making it the most advanced bioprinting solution on the market. This is an ambitious goal, but also the final form of 3D bioprinting will likely be adopted over time.

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Velo3D is a 3D printing company primarily working on metal 3D printing. The company has successfully entered this market, achieving almost 20% of the market share in metal 3D printing in 2023, from almost nothing 2 years prior.

Additive manufacturing slowly adds layer-by-layer material into the final design instead of pouring molten materials and waiting for them to take the shape of the mold. It allows it to create complex shapes and products that traditional methods simply cannot achieve.

Another factor is strong hardware/software integration, allowing for easier training in additive manufacturing and a more efficient design process.

Investors will need to examine the company's prospect of reaching profitability and might want to understand deeper the market position of CFF manufacturing.

This lower cost structure helps Voxeljet to be active in sectors not usual for a 3D printing company, like architecture, props for the film industry, museums, or even statues.

47% of the company's clients in 2021 were new clients, showing the quick growth of the industry and 3D Systems client base. In 2021, the company's revenues were equally split between industrial and healthcare (mostly prostheses and dental).

The company has been growing quickly, with revenues and GAAP gross margin up 50% CAGR since 2015. Still, it is expected to experience large losses in 2023, with $54M operating losses on revenues of $101M.

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It is also active in healthcare, starting from acquiring German EnvisionTEC, which includes dental care technology. This comes in tandem with a strategic partnership with the leading orthodontic firm Align Technology.

A not well-known fact may be that Engel is the world’s largest screw manufacturer in the injection molding industry. At K 2019 Düsseldorf, Germany, the company will be presenting its extensive plasticizing portfolio.

Xometry is currently mostly focused on the US but has rapidly expanded its international footprint, with 11% of revenues coming from Europe and Asia. The European expansion is partly driven by the acquisition of the on-demand marketplace Tridi for $3.8M, following the previous acquisition of manufacturer database Thomasnet for $3000M in 2021.

Long glass-fiber reinforced polypropylene and polyamide are commonly used for lightweight automotive construction – above all when high impact strength, excellent impact behaviour and low weight are required. The processing challenge in injection molding is to keep the fiber as long as possible and ensure uniform distribution of the fibers in the melt.

A key technology of Markforged is Continuous Fiber Fabrication (CFF). This unique method of 3D printing allows fiber (plastic of carbon) to achieve physical performance like directional strength equal to or even superior to metal.

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For example, these technologies can be used for building optical or radio components. The company claims it can reduce the ecological footprint of manufacturing, with a reduction of 94% in CO2 emissions, 100% in water, 98% in materials, and 82% in chemicals.

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