System investment – Copy
System investment
Major players continue to enter the AM market with high investments
In this section we will focus on the investment into the printer itself and cover investment into other equipment in the post processing section.
What you will find in this section
Investment cost vs. machine run time
Material Extrusion with lowest hourly rate
Typicial investment costs into metal AM printers vary between ~200 000 € for a small Binder Jetting printer to over 1m € for a large, multi-laser Powder Bed Fusion printer. An exception to this is Material Extrusion, where printers can already be purchased for ~100 000 €.
In order to arrive at a hourly rate for a printer, one has to calculate the machine runtime per year as well as the number of years in which the printer is depreciated. While the depreciation period is generally easy to define (a typical value is 5 years), the annual runtime is harder to predict. Using a printer for prototyping might result in a machine runtime of 2 000-3 000 hours per year, serial production cases can reach 6 000 hours and beyond.
As a general rule of thumb, the hourly rate of a printer can be calculated by dividing the initial invest by 20 000. Typical investment cost as well as hourly rates that can be used for initial cost estimation can be found in the graph above. A more detailed formula for calculating the hourly rate can be found at the end of this section.
Powder Bed Fusion
Price spread for machines increases
The overall high system investment poses an obstacle for fast and widespread adoption of metal Additive Manufacturing.
Since the early days of the technology, the average investment for a PBF system was in the range of 250 000 € to 500 000 €. Those high prices were driven by expensive laser systems, a complex system architecture for gas flow and powder management as well as extensive R&D efforts. Advancements such as multi-laser technology, in-process quality assurance or larger build envelopes push the PBF system prices even higher today, often exceeding several million €. Additional investments for necessary periphery of PBF technology to handle powder or final products can exceed 100 000 € and should not be neglected during decision making.
However, several systems for metal processing have recently been introduced to the market that cost less than 100 000 € in total. Low-cost L-PBF systems are now available from providers such as XACT METAL or LASER MELTING INNOVATIONS. They achieve price reduction by substituting cost-intensive optical components with mechanical actuators. Loss of performance, however, is an ancillary effect.
More recently, Chinese manufacturers such as BLT, E-PLUS 3D and FARSOON have entered the European market and are putting price pressure on existing suppliers.
AMPOWER Investment Performance Index for selected metal L-PBF machines
Increasing productivity relative to machine investment
Reducing the cost for Additive Manufacturing unlocks further applications. Established equipment manufacturers continuously try to turn every screw in order to drive down cost per part to grow the overall AM market. Many machine and process innovations entering the market have the goal to reduce costs even further.
On one hand, companies like ONE CLICK METAL and XACT METAL are entering the market with low priced machines. Priced at 100,000 EUR, the low initial investment reduces the entry barrier and subsequently the hourly machine rate. On the other side, many companies such as SLM SOLUTIONS have chosen a different path. Integrating up to 12 lasers into systems with very large build platforms enhance productivity and overall machine efficiency. However, this increases the initial investment to several million Euros.
Material Extrusion
Material Extrusion pushing on the market with low system investment
While PBF and other laser or electron beam technologies have a high entry threshold, Metal ME can significantly reduce system investment. Vendors for example are MARKFORGED, DESKTOP METAL or AIM3D, to name a few. With the introduction of metal filaments such as ULTRAFUSE from BASF, even a low-cost ME printer for less than 1 000 € can potentially print green parts. However, the subsequent debinding and sintering process equipment is still capital intensive. Complete systems of green body debinding and sintering from MARKFORGED or DESKTOP METAL cost around 100 000 € – 200 000 €. More recently, low-cost providers such as NANOE’s ZETAMIX technology offer end-to-end solutions starting as low as 15,000€.
Binder Jetting
Strong technology push for Metal Binder Jetting systems expected
Directed Energy Deposition
Investment costs into DED machines depend on machine size
DED and other high deposition rate technologies such as Coldspray typically target large applications. Hence, the overall system technology increases in size and systems capable of handling part weights of up to 500 kg are needed. This usually leads to investments of 500 000 € to 1 500 000 € and in special cases even more.
Formula
How to calculate the hourly machine rate
The machine hourly rate is calculated according to the formula above. The main factors are .
- Yearly system cost – SYSyearly: Investment into the printer, periphery and installation cost divided by the depreciation period, annual tooling and maintenance cost
- Monthly system cost – SYSmonthly: System maintenance plus tools
- Annual runtime – Tyearly: 8 760 h/year minus maintenance time multiplied by system utilization
- Hourly system cost – SYShourly: Energy consumption (standby) of printer and post processing equipment