The global manufacturing business climate remains very encouraging. Based on our observations, we were expecting that the manufacturing sector would be a little stronger in the first half of 2018 than in the second. This played out as expected until the very end of 2018 when we saw a significant spike in multiple manufacturing sectors. That strong year-end growth has also driven an excellent beginning to 2019.

Manufacturing in the U.S. continues to strengthen, and general global manufacturing growth continues into this year with some extremely exciting hotspots. We’re expecting additional growth in the aerospace sector, as well as rapid expansion of machines and software that encourages fast, efficient machining with fewer setups. Multitasking centers and advanced multiaxis machines are two examples that we expect will become even more popular throughout the year.

It’s also interesting to take a step back and look at the manufacturing output for the last decade. We saw the beginnings of a steep decline in 2008 and hit and alarming valley in early 2009, with the financial crisis in full swing. Manufacturing, and everything that supplies it, took an enormous dip. Since the end of 2009 until today, however, we’ve seen slow, steady growth in manufacturing output. This pattern of growth has brought machine tool manufacturers, software suppliers, shops, and machinists along with it. It’s exciting that everyone – us, you, your readers – all can benefit as part of an industry that’s proven to be the backbone of economic recovery.

2018 was a big year for the 3DP/AM industry as the field showed signs of bifurcation to now include clear capabilities for digital manufacturing at scale. The powerful convergence of hardware, software, and molecular science is enabling production at a scale the industry hasn’t seen before. At Carbon, we launched the largest digital fabrication example in history with the launch of the adidas Futurecraft 4D franchise. More than 100,000 pairs of 4D running shoes were fabricated and we are on track to manufacture into the millions in 2019. Other customers of ours also have examples of manufacturing with our Digital Light Synthesis™ technology, which will be announced in the first half of 2019. These production examples in the aggregate have triggered an important tipping point for the industry: we now see, for the first time, a cost-down curve with volume in the digital manufacturing world akin to the cost down-curve with volume that everyone relies on in the injection molding industry.  As a result, Carbon was able to take the price of our large volume resins from $300/L to $150/L last year to an unprecedented $50/L here in 2018.

Read the rest of MCADCafe Industry Predictions for 2019 – Carbon