Aug. 11, 2014
Netherlands-based 3D printing network 3D Hubs released its August report on 3D printing trends today. Based on the data from their community which boasts well over 6000 printer listings and thousands of 3D print jobs, 3D Hubs tracks what the most popular printers, manufacturers and materials are.
3D Hubs' August report in August lists 15 printers that rate the highest print quality. Two professional printer, the Projet 660 and Zcorp printer from 3D Systems, make numbers 1 and 2 in the chart respectively. Form 1, Last month's top performer, dropped two spots and appears at number 3. Afinia H480 enters the chart for the first time and comes on the 5th place, with an impressive 4.67 print quality rating from 12 users.
As usual 3D Hubs' "trending printers" shows which printer model grows at the fastest rate. The Da Vinci 1.0 grew 56.3% month over month, this is likely due to its cheap price. The Da Vinci 1.0 costs only about USD 500.-. And last month Robo 3D was still listed on no. 11 but its growth picked up and it now sits high up on the 2nd place.
The popular MakerBot's printer still dominates most of the world's regions, such as North America, Asia Pacific and South America. Makerbot is less popular in Europe, with only 7.3% of the distribution in this August report. That's probably one of the reasons that Makerbot decided to open a MakerBot Europe office in Germany. Earlier this month, MakerBot announced that it is acquiring certain assets of its Germany-based partner, HAFNER'S BÜRO to expand its European operations.
Ultimaker 1, 2 and Prosa i3 are still the most popular printers in Europe. The Up! Plus is the new printer on the block in Asia Pacific's chart with a 5.10% market share.
These are just a few topics that are discussed in the Trend Report in August. The full Report can be found here.
Posted in 3D Printers
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If you look at the their system.. you see they allow for users to rate the service including the quality. These reviews are akin to amazon reviews. Submitted by end users whom may have only seen their first 3d print... right now. It's a grain of a salt test certainly.. but if the "average joe" thinks this is good.... on a global scale.. then that's the market regardless of what engineers may argue over capabilities wise. At the end of the day it's the printer operator that determines the quality of the parts... subject to printable designs to start with.
Jake C. wrote at 8/12/2014 1:57:52 PM:
It's just about money - who cares. Why not just print CEO's salaries and be done with it.
Please!! wrote at 8/12/2014 8:51:15 AM:
You are kidding me! Zcorp as a model? Plaster powder printer prints best quality? Dimension as well? While are rest SLS, SLA....? Just don't fool other people please!
Bri wrote at 8/11/2014 7:51:18 PM:
Somehow I'm not buying the quality ratings, as the pictures look horrible for some of them.
Data wrote at 8/11/2014 7:03:42 PM:
I appreciate the data and the work on this but it's currently too early for this to be of any real use. A few problems are as so few people input data the results are far too easy to skew. For example 12 people in the world saying their affinia (or any other printer) is good is hardly a decent sample of the market. Also it is fairly subjective it's more - 'how good the owner believes the quality of their prints is' NOT - the actual quality of the printer compared to a set standard. But as i said , early days, this would hold some real value if they got the samples up to tens of thousands.
TK wrote at 8/11/2014 5:44:16 PM:
How did they measure quality? Is it some end user subjective acceptance criterion like amazon reviews? Or did they commission prints made and sent back to be rigorously measured and such to fully vet that people could setup and calibrate prints, such as thru torture test prints?
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