Rapid Prototyping Equipment Financing
The Platform Battlefield
There's a real battle shaping up in RP platform technology. It's going to be a long one, and there's no telling just how it will come out, but the struggle as well as the possible eventualities are already having an impact on the plans of RP users.
At the turn of the century, a picture of the RP landscape would show that platforms fell into one of two distinct classes. Some machines, which most users thought of as "real" RP platforms, were priced in six-figures and produced three-dimensional objects of significant size and precision in a variety of materials. Other machines, thought of as concept modelers, were priced at five-figure levels, and they produced objects from less versatile materials at lower precision.
Emerging platforms like Objet's Eden 250
rattle the competition
If you were making a model of a functional prototype, you used a high-end platform. If you just needed to get an idea what an object looked like in three dimensions, and needed it cheaply and in a hurry, you used a concept modeler. If a shop had only one machine, and if the machine was a fully featured RP platform, you could say the shop was a production shop or a service bureau supporting production for its clients. And if a shop had only a concept modeler, chances are the shop was an engineering outfit or design house that had to provide what amounted to three-dimensional sketches to clients who then proceeded to the next iteration when they liked what they saw.
Since the turn of the century, all the rules have changed. High-end systems have not become markedly better: their build envelopes are stagnant, their speed has not increased, and their precision has not improved. However, the range of materials used in RP has widened.
By contrast, low-end systems have improved significantly. These platforms have not yet caught up to the high-end systems, but the gap seems to be closing. These days they work with an impressive range of resins and powders, producing much better results than they could only a couple years ago. As a using only high-end platforms result, low-end RP systems are now used to build objects that were formerly created. Engineering and design shops use the machines for most stages of the design iteration process.
Proponents of the lower cost technologies believe the future will belong to these platforms, and if not to the machines available right now, to low-end RP platforms that will become available in the near future.
People who use high-end RP platforms disagree. They claim the overall market isn't large enough to support the manufacturers of inexpensive systems. They believe the RP technologies that they prefer will improve in quality and value. They think the future will closely resembles the recent past, one in which there will still be two classes of system, but with each class offering a lot more than it does today and with high-end machines dominating in the most demanding applications.
While the users of RP systems that have invested in one type of platform may have strong feelings about the direction the technology will take, the sales volume leader in the platform business, 3D Systems, is hedging its bets. It still offers high-end systems, of course, but in late 2003 it began selling a new low-end product called Invision. 3D believes it has to move into the low-end market even as it continues to enrich its high-end product line. The company worries that it could get caught in a squeeze between RP vendors offering, at the high end, more capable systems and, at the low end, platforms that provide better value and more versatility than its own offerings.
Sony, not 3D, has defined the current pinnacle of RP technology. Its SCS-900D systems provide much larger build envelopes (39 in. x 31 in. x 19.6 in.) than any other machines in the field. So far, Sony has not established a track record in North America, but its first installation is in place and more are likely to follow.
EOS, a high-end platform vendor that is a major player in Europe and Japan, is only beginning to be seen in the USA, but its machines also give 3D platforms a run for the users' money.
At the same time, a number of firms making low-end platforms have been able to get their systems into settings that only a little while ago would never have considered using one of the upstart technologies for production work. Objet, Z Corp. and EnvisionTec have gained significant market share in just a few years. This is quite surprising. Many times, a promising technology has been announced only to languish with little or no sales. But these upstarts are really gaining ground with their ideas.
In the long run, all this competition will give users better technology and better value. But it will also add uncertainty to an environment that is already about as risky as many participants, particularly service bureaus, can stand.
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