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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).

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.

In the realm of medical device manufacturing, the tussle between traditional injection moulding and modern 3D printing technologies continues. However, injection moulding has held its ground firmly, especially when high-volume production, cost-effectiveness, and precision are all paramount.

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.

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”.

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.

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Well-suited for products with straightforward shapes, injection moulding delivers unrivalled precision and finish quality. For medical applications such as moving machine parts or implantable devices, the procedure gives a vital smoother finish.

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 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.

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.

Gas-assisted injection moulding: In certain medical device applications, gas-assist moulding can provide solutions that conventional injection moulding can’t. The process consists of injecting a pressurised gas into the mould cavity after the initial plastic injection, expelling the molten plastic and forming hollow areas within the final product. It is suited to the manufacturing of complex parts without visual blemishes, for instance, tube- or rod-shaped parts which typically include handles and foot pedals, as well as large, cover-shaped structural parts e.g. side panels and covers for medical devices.

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.

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.

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 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%.

Liquid silicone injection moulding: This produces pliable, durable parts in high volume, and is used in fabricating tubes and respiratory masks requiring high levels of hygiene and chemical resistance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

An expansive range of materials are available with injection moulding, making it easier to produce medical equipment that adheres to the strict biosafety and chemical stability criteria of the medical sector. Techniques such as thin wall moulding and gas-assisted injection moulding enable the production of both practical and aesthetically appealing parts.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The indelible imprint of injection moulding in medical manufacturing underscores its pivotal role in delivering efficient, high-quality, and cost-effective solutions to the industry. As the medical field continues to evolve, the synergy between injection moulding and emerging technologies like 3D printing is poised to drive innovation further, ensuring the continual enhancement of patient care and medical advancements.

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.

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.

Thin wall moulding: A specialised form of conventional injection moulding that focuses on the mass production of ultra-thin (less than 1mm) and light plastic parts to make material cost savings. This is used to create portable medical devices enabling clinicians and patients to transport and operate them more easily - such as wearable devices, micro surgical tools, and invasive equipment like catheter ablation tools and endoscopes.

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.

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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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

Since the need for devices and components in the medical sector is always increasing, injection moulding stands out for its effectiveness and capacity to handle large-scale orders. The method is best suited for high-volume production, making it the preferred method for mass-producing medical components. That said, even though 3D printing is hailed for having cheaper initial costs in small-scale production, its cost advantage diminishes as production volume rises.

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.

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".

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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

Perhaps intriguingly is the fact that 3D printing and injection moulding are not exclusive of one another. Injection moulding is frequently preceded by 3D printing, which assists with prototyping and even helps create moulds for the injection moulding process.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Luke Smoothy, founder and director, Get It Made, delves into why injection moulding still holds the sceptre in the medical industry and highlights the key benefits it brings.

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.

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.

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.