Additive Manufacturing and New Processes

Additive manufacturing — building a part layer by layer from a digital file instead of cutting it from a block, casting it in a mould or stamping it from sheet — has been "about to change everything" at least twice in thirty years, and both times the real business turned out narrower and slower than the story. The narrow business is real: General Electric's plant in Auburn, Alabama shipped its 100,000th printed fuel-nozzle tip for the CFM LEAP engine in August 2021 (trade press), a part that replaced about 20 brazed pieces with one, is reported as ~25% lighter and ~5 times more durable, and goes into every LEAP engine at 18–19 nozzles each; dental aligner moulds, hearing-aid shells, surgical guides, jigs and fixtures, rocket-engine parts and low-volume spares are printed by the million. The broad business — printing ordinary production parts at volume in place of moulding and machining — has not arrived on the timetable investors were sold. The 2013–14 consumer-printer boom faded within two years; the 2020–21 SPAC wave valued Desktop Metal at ~$2.5bn (Dec 2020, reported, verify), Markforged and Velo3D at similar heady multiples of tiny revenue, and ended in consolidation and bankruptcy: Nano Dimension closed its purchase of Desktop Metal in April 2025 for ~$179.3m and of Markforged on 25 April 2025 for ~$116m (Nano Dimension 10-K); Desktop Metal filed for Chapter 11 in the Southern District of Texas in July 2025 (reported) and its core US binder-jet business was sold to Arc Impact Acquisition Corp for ~$7m, finalised around 4 Sep 2025 (trade press). Stratasys, the largest survivor, took a $120m investment for ~14% from Fortissimo Capital (closed Apr 2025) and reported 2025 revenue of $551.1m (2024: $572.5m) with a GAAP net loss of $104.3m and $244.5m of cash and no debt (company 6-K). This section explains the technologies, the economics that decide where additive wins, the hype cycles and busts, the consolidation, the places it pays, and the other process shifts — gigacasting above all — that changed car bodies faster than 3D printing did. A companion file works through a stylized break-even between printing and injection moulding for one part.