3D Printing 2.0

Desktop Metal, a leader in 3D printing with printers than can build metal parts, is going public. 

Supporters of the company claim this is the beginning of a much more successful era for 3D printing, which they're calling 3D printing 2.0.

As the Crunchbase article 3D Printing Investment Going Vertical As Big Exit Looms points out, 3D printing has been around a long time and, so far, has not lived up to its hype.  Key quote:

Transformative technologies often get massively overhyped at the early stage. In the case of 3D printing, the breakout moment was supposed to be 2012, when a new generation of desktop 3D machines hit shelves. Soon, they were to be nearly as commonplace as smartphones.

Needless to say, that futuristic vision didn’t pan out.

But as we pointed out in our 2017 article 3D Printing Moving Past Prototyping to Large Batch Manufacturing, even in 2017 3D printing had become an important vertical market manufacturing technology. 

The reasons supporter of 3D printing claim it's turned the corner and will quickly expand are fairly straight forward.  They say the technology has reached the point where it can effectively compete with traditional large scale manufacturing systems.  And systems like Desktop Metal's that allow the printing of metal parts greatly expands the market.

3D printing is actively used in a lot of industries to manufacture things.  Again, from the Crunchbase article:

From jet engine parts to teeth straighteners to lab-grown chicken nuggets, startups and established manufacturers alike rely on the technology to create new products and add efficiency and customization to production of existing ones.

And everyone is forecasting that 3D printing will continue to grow rapidly.

The phrase "this time it's different" is well known as the phrase most likely to be wrong when used in forecasting.  

But sometimes this time really is different.  And after many false starts, this appears to be true for 3D printing.

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