3D printing - a review of technologies, market and opportunities for the forestry industry

摘要

3D printing has been used to produce prototypes and molds in industry for many years and is now gaining increasing interest due to its expansion into consumer products markets as well as the exploration of potential applications in manufacturing large architectural structures. Recent intellectual property changes (especially the expiration of early patents) have led to the availability of low cost 3D printers. This has turned 3D printing from a small-scale prototyping tool into a potential game changer for product development and manufacturing. This report summarizes the development of 3D printing, its market and applications in the short and medium term. 3D printing is ideal for mass customization, but it is not yet capable of mass production because of limitations on cost, speed and materials. The near future of 3D printing will be for production tooling, on-demand parts of low volume, for design and educational tools, for products made at home, and even for large architectural structures. The potential applications for forest products have been examined. Forest industry products based on wood fibres and wood-based biomaterials are already being prototyped using 3D printing. There is also an increasing interest using wood-based materials as part of the feedstocks for 3D printing to impart unique appearance for printed products and meet the demand for sustainability from the consumers. This could become part of the transformation of the forest industry from the production of commodities to the production of high value-added specialty products.