Approaching the behemoth that is Tokyo Big Sight, Japan’s largest international exhibition centre, on an early trade show morning will never not feel special.
As we caught a glimpse of those four iconic inverted pyramids set against a clear blue sky from the Yurikamome metro line, for the TCT team travelling from the UK, the excitement around being in Japan for our sixth year was as alive as ever. And judging by the crowds that gathered in Tokyo for TCT Japan 2024, our excitement mirrored the strong appetite for additive manufacturing (AM) from a market that has long been considered a slow adopter of the technology. Perhaps not anymore.
Standing room only is good and all, but throughout the week, a queue of delegates could be seen snaking around the conference theatre waiting to hear from a roster of renowned and emerging voices in the industrial 3D printing space. This year we welcomed our strongest international line-up to date as speakers from Wohlers Associates, powered by ASTM International, Boston Consulting Group, Reeves Insight, the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA) and Nissan, led a programme that focused on market outlooks, sustainability and applications.
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Terry Wohlers gives keynote at TCT Japan 2024
Terry Wohlers, Head of Advisory Services and Market Intelligence at Wohlers Associates, powered by ASTM International kicked things off with a global industry overview. "There is a strong appetite for functionality, parts that work, they're not just for show and tell," Wohlers said of the latest findings from the Wohlers Report, with 27.5% of worldwide applications found to be functional prototypes, and 30.5% end-use parts. When discussing how we get more industries and users to adopt AM, Wohlers posited that when big companies, the Strykers and sporting goods brands of the world, lead the charge, their competitors take note.
While automotive was found to be at the forefront of overall adoption, closely followed by consumer products and aerospace, Wohlers cautioned that the big shift to mass production hasn’t quite happened yet in automotive – a theory that was supported by a later presentation from Dr. Nanzhu Zhao at Nissan. Wohlers did however point to Cadillac as an example of a company to watch over the next year as the automaker plans to use 115 3D printed parts, including an aluminium steering wheel, on its CELESTIQ luxury e-vehicle.
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Hideaki Oba, Researcher, and Tsukasa Matsuoka, Managing Director at Japan 3D Printing industrial technology Association
Continuing the global perspective was Wilderich Heising, Partner & Associate Director at Boston Consulting Group who talked about the period of rapid change the AM industry finds itself in due to the M&A and consolidation activity, and highlights Japan's own Nikon’s and its takeover of SLM Solutions and investment in several other AM activities as one of the most significant. Heising talked about the growing trend for major AM players to offer integrated solutions (machines, materials and services) but caveated that the ‘winners’ will be able to differentiate. "We need to provide value to the end users - we will convince people when there is value for them in using AM,” Heising said.
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Speaking about how scaling AM will be driven by manufacturing use cases, not prototyping, Heising shared details on BCG’s AMOS (Additive Manufacturing Opportunity Screening) tool, which enables companies to check their part portfolios for potential 3D printing cases. For one customer, Heising said, from a back catalogue of 400,000+ SKUs, 3-4% were identified as potential AM parts with a potential ROI of 35%.
"We are beyond the hype now. We are in a more realistic world," Heising concluded. "We are at the verge of industrialisation of AM."
Additive manufacturing adoption in Japan
When we consider the rate of AM adoption in Japan against that of other regions like Europe, China and North America, it’s easy to forget that Japan is where the genesis of additive manufacturing really began. According to the latest Wohlers Report, today Japan makes up 29% of industrial 3D printer (machines costing $5,000+) installs in the Asia/Pacific region, the second highest in the region after China (36%).
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JEOL tungsten 3D printed parts
On stage, Hideaki Oba, Researcher, and Tsukasa Matsuoka, Managing Director at Japan 3D Printing industrial technology Association hosted two Q&A sessions that went a little deeper into the challenges facing Japanese adoption. When asked about how Japan tackles its comparatively prudent usage of AM technologies, Wohlers suggested taking note of other organisations that are taking bigger risks and trying new things, noting that smaller spin off companies and start-ups are a good place to try, fail and learn in the AM space.
There were over 100 exhibitors and more than 200 machines represented on the show floor at this year’s event and it was encouraging to see examples of homegrown manufacturers and applications very much flying the flag for AM in Japan. Metals were strong here, and on the JEOL booth, the Japanese manufacturer of electron beam melting systems showed a range of applications from aerospace fins to acetabular cups demonstrating multi-material metal 3D printing capabilities. One highlight was a vacuum chamber for one of its own machines, which had been 3D printed using its own technology and consolidated to reduce part count, but the company also showed more recent part examples in tungsten printed on its flagship JAM-5200EBM system.
Sustainability and additive manufacturing - a reality check
At least year’s TCT Japan, Materialise co-founder and CEO Fried Vancraen concluded his TCT Hall of Fame speech with a call to action: “Together, all over the world, we can make this sustainable industry with AM a success.” The theme of sustainability took an even bigger share of the agenda this year with AM industry consultant Phil Reeves providing a thorough overview of AM's green credentials. Reeves offered a welcome reality check, detailing the many steps that have to analysed in order to fully understand whether additive is a more sustainable alternative method of manufacture. Unlike traditional materials and methods, there are no first principles for 3D printing, Reeves explained, adding that the chemistry we use in AM is not clean chemistry, yet our perception of AM as a clean, modern process projects the idea that the technology is sustainable. We can't just look at a clean printer and presume it's good, because it's not always the case, Reeves said, highlighting the perceived environmental benefits of AM, with localised manufacture pinpointed as the biggest red flag.
Reeves shared an example from the fashion industry with Dyloan, a company that specialises in 2D ink jetting colour onto fabric. With 97% of footwear emissions coming from materials and making of products, according to Reeves, the company is moving to 3D printing with the Stratasys J850 TechStyle printer to create patterns for 8,000 pairs of designer sneakers per year. For this analysis, they are purely measuring what happens in the factory. According to Reeves, the traditional way to produce a logo pattern onto a pair of designer sneakers requires 12 manufacturing steps. Within the same boundary, 3D printing requires just one step. The analysis digs into the entire process, even down to the manufacture of the printer itself, which, it turns out, can be as energy and resource intensive as building an entire car.
Adding yet more tangible data to the conversation, Sherri Monroe, Executive Director at the AMGTA shared case studies exploring the environmental benefits of AM, starting with the manufacture of a low-pressure turbine aerospace bracket built with AMGTA founding company Sintavia, which Monroe described as "the genesis" of the organisation. For 24 installed brackets, the additive parts were found to offer a more sustainable solution, with lifetime savings of 21,565kg of CO2-eq for 125,000 flight hours.
Monroe also showed a recent comparison between binder jet and traditional sand casting processes for a HVAC component. The impact of high energy usage for powder production is often raised as a concern for AM, and while that was found to be true in this case study, the cradle to grave analysis resulted in a more sustainable overall process.
Supporting Reeves' claim that 'localised manufacture' is a big factor to be wary of when considering greener manufacturing, Monroe spoke about the importance of "location, location, location" in AM. Where a part is manufactured will have an impact on its environmental impact, whether you're looking at localised manufacturing or assessing energy consumption. As the industry comes to terms with the fact that AM technology is not as inherently sustainable as once thought, Monroe concluded that "to increase the adoption of additive there are questions that need to be answered and quantified."
The role of 3D printing in Japan's automotive market
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Gigacasting application on the Sodick booth
The automotive industry represents a massive piece of Japan’s economy, but as Wohler’s shared, the global automotive industry hasn’t reached the same level of AM penetration as other sectors. Nissan’s Dr Zhao’s talk on generative design and sustainable AM for automotive applications offered a practical look at the deployment of AM in the sector. He shared how Nissan’s motivation has always been "Can we really adopt additive manufacturing for automotive manufacturing and engineering? Just because we could doesn't mean we should."
The drive to electrification in automotive is strong, and that drive will require more lightweight parts, replacing steel parts with aluminium, and more intelligent design. It's could also potentially offer more sustainable alternatives, and Nissan is exploring solid-state recycling to drive that.
Nissan is being proactive about its adoption of AM. The team has been working with Northwestern University to develop a new UV projection-based AM technology. After three years of R&D, it has developed a high-speed, high-resolution system that Nissan says is capable of printing at 1cm per second. Prototype systems are currently being built, including a large-scale machine that can be used for large automotive parts. Dr Zhao said Nissan intends to publish more information in the coming months.
Given Japan’s strength in the automotive industry, it’s no surprise that gigacasting, which we highlighted in the first issue of the year, was spotted on the show floor. Sodick’s booth featured a large-format gigacasting example from Nihonseiki Co. Ltd, and the company shared how it’s even developing its own powders specifically designed to handle the mechanical stresses of large metal parts.
Big parts were a big deal across the showfloor. For the first time in Japan, AMCM presented a combustion chamber from the ArianeGroup Prometheus rocket engine 3D printed in copper on its AMCM M 8K system, while Chinese manufacturer Bright Laser Technologies showed a huge integrated array panel measuring 1,125 x 1,300 x 20mm printed on its large-format BLT S1000 in AlSi10Mg with an internal lattice. The build time was a whopping 380 hours. The theme continued in polymers too with Massivit, known for its large-format gel-based technology, which showed a near 2-metre 3D printed bear created by Okubo Kogei Co., Ltd via its Japanese distributor Selcam.
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AMCM presented a 3D printed combustion chamber from the ArianeGroup Prometheus rocket
Japan and the global 3D printing outlook
On an episode of our Additive Insight podcast last year, Chris Connery, Head of Global Analysis at CONTEXT and 2023 TCT Japan speaker, honed in on the AM activity in Japan: “Japan has always been at the lower end in terms of market adoption, in terms of players in the space. It's always been a little bit of a head scratcher for us in that when we started following the market 10 to 12 years ago, we expected Japan to have been a bigger player just because they've always been a big player in technology and in manufacturing. But now we're starting to see that change.”
Connery acknowledged how in terms of machine points, the market in Asia has been dominated by China but with Nikon’s completed takeover of SLM Solutions, and homegrown companies like DMG Mori being more visible in the AM market, suggested that Japan is not a market to be ignored: “You can now really see the recognition by Japan that additive manufacturing is a key technology that can help the region with its own manufacturing, as well as companies in this space.”
It would be easy to look at the packed conference theatres and end-use applications on display at TCT Japan as a siloed snapshot of the country's AM activity, but evidence of the technology's adoption travels much further than the halls of Tokyo Big Sight.
This year, Kurimoto is opening the doors to Japan’s largest metal AM facility with newly installed LPBF machines from GF Machining Solutions. Speaking to TCT, President of Kurimoto, Mr. Hidetoshi Kurimoto said “Our ambition is to continue to develop 3D printing technology, which is attracting attention not only in Japan but also around the world for next generation applications in key industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, aerospace, defence, and electric vehicles.” Elsewhere, in January US 3D printing provider 3DEO received investment from Japan in what was described as a ‘pivotal step’ in its growth strategies in North America and Japan. Just last month, ceramic 3D printing specialist Lithoz established partnerships with three contract manufacturers to advance ceramic 3D printing in Japan. We're also seeing applications like that of Japanese lifestyle golf brand Designer which recently unveiled a new 3D printed titanium golf club head, manufactured using Farsoon’s FS200M metal 3D printing system, and in defence, Australian manufacturer SPEE3D announced it has agreed a contract with the Japan Ministry of Defense to provide WarpSPEE3D and XSPEE3D printers for the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF).
And all that has come in just the first couple of months of 2024, painting a positive outlook for the year, and for TCT Japan 2025.
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TCT Japan 2024 show floor
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Dr. Nanzhu Zhao at Nissan on stage at TCT Japan
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Phil Reeves show sustainable 3D printing case study at TCT Japan
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Exhibitors meet with customers on the TCT Japan show floor
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Ultimaker at TCT Japan 2024
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Terry Wohlers on stage with the Japan 3D Printing Industrial Technology Association
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Large-format sculpture created with Massivit's gel-based technology
