Photo by Silvio Kundt on Unsplash

Easily one of mankind’s best inventions, 3D printers are gaining some momentum. Americans and Europeans are crazy about them (Asia not so much apparently) and they plan to increase their spending in this field, both for business and as a hobby.

The data comes from a survey by Sculpteo on a sample of 1,118 respondents spanning various professions and businesses, including design, education, marketing, and sales, as well as plain old hobbyists.

Spending is on the rise

Sculpteo doesn’t know why exactly, but spending is definitely soaring according to their report. 44% said they will spend more on additive manufacturing (specifically, twice as much as before), and 68% said they’ll definitely invest more in this activity in 2015.

Their top priorities are (in order of appearance): accelerating product development, offering customized products and limited series, enabling co-creation, increasing production flexibility, improving spare parts management, reducing tooling investment, and optimizing demo product expenses. 14% said they plan to buy a 3D printer this year, and 15% pledged to do so by 2020. I have a feeling they’ll be doing so much sooner if printing materials become more diverse.

Speaking of which…

Finding the next easily-printable material

As many of you probably already know, 3D printers traditionally build things from plastic. The reasons are more than obvious. Its melting point is fairly low and its moldability is high. The same thing cannot be said about metals, though. Not only is it dangerous to melt metals at home, it would also require a much more versatile and expensive printer to replace plastic with, say, iron.

But that’s not stopping users from dreaming. In fact, most of the respondents put “materials” on the top of their list when asked “Are there any trends that you anticipate having a major impact on 3D printing?” Next in line were new markets, followed by easy modeling, efficiency, price, and better designed printers.

Europe has more 3D printing prowess than America

Americans (23%) admitted to being less qualified than Europeans (26%). However, American are also less intimidated by the concept and will be more inclined to go ahead and 3D print something whether or not they have any formal training. You could say they’re more audacious or cocky, which is most likely an accurate description of our western friends.

Early adopters in Europe seek attaining scale, whereas their American equivalents are focused on co-creation and investing in actual 3D printing hardware. And while Europe is currently focused more on customizations and limited series products, America sees this as a priority in the longer run (by 2020).

Everyone loves to prototype

There’s a lot more stuff to extract from the research, but I’ll end with this interesting pie chart about actual uses of 3D printing among the same two demographics. The results were strikingly similar on both continents. Prototyping and proof-of-concept are far the preferred activities involving 3D printers, with only a small fraction of the sample touting a hobby.