Additive manufacturing is still a tiny business. You’ll find it in prestige products and in highly specialist sectors of the economy – lightweight parts for fighter jets, or medical implants. But the underlying technologies are on an exponential course. Researchers estimate that most additive manufacturing methods are developing at a pace of between 16.7 per cent and 37.6 per cent every year, with the average rate falling in the high thirties.16 Over the next 10 years we will see performance improve 14 times – and, of course, see prices drop concomitantly. Terry Wohlers, an analyst of the
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