Last year， shares of 3D Systems （DDD）， a maker of industrial and consumer 3D printers， shot up 270 percent. These gains turned 3D Systems’ stock into one of the best performers of 2012 and broadened investor interest in 3D printing technology. The question for 2013 will be whether that interest can hold as investors， enthused by what they’ve been reading about 3D printing technology， encounter some of the realities of the marketplace for these machines.

（Folks just coming up to speed on this topic can check out a profile I wrote on 3D Systems and 3D printing early last year. Those who read it and invested can thank me later.）

3D Systems makes the vast majority of its money selling large printers to companies that want to crank out quick prototypes of parts. Aeronautics and auto companies have been longtime users of this technology. Today so， too， are consumer electronics companies and even orthodontists making custom braces. For all of 2011， 3D Systems reported revenue of $230.4 million. One chunk （$137.3 million） came from selling the actual machines， while the second chunk （$93.1 million） came from selling what amount to proprietary plastics and powders that go into the machines， much as Hewlett-Packard （HPQ） sells toner and ink to its printer customers.

STORY：?Bre Pettis： 3D Printing‘s First Celebrity

Here’s the rub： 3D Systems spent just $14.3 million on research and development in 2011. That’s a paltry 6 percent of revenue. Its main rival Stratasys （SSYS） posted 2011 revenue of $155.9 million and spent $14.4 million on R&D.

Step back and think about these totals for a minute， and you might come away disheartened. 3D printing rightly gets billed as one of the most exciting areas of technology， and it’s simply not receiving the level of investment that you would expect.

A major problem with 3D printing ignored by most is that there’s no Moore’s Law-type mechanics underlying the technology. The physics behind fusing a powder with a laser， or melting plastic and squeezing it through a nozzle， pose severe limitations on the speed at which you can print an object. And once you’ve applied a layer of plastic， the printer must take time to move and adjust a platform supporting the object.

You can add a nozzle or two to speed up the work， but this is a far cry from doubling the amount of transistors on a chip every 18 months， or doubling the storage on a hard drive. There may come a spectacular advance to change these equations， but no one seems to have found any yet. And it seems unlikely that the amount spent on R&D today by the major makers of 3D printers—3D Systems， Stratasys， and Germany’s EOS—will be enough to turn up an unexpected， exponential price-per-performance booster.

Evidence of just how antiquated the technology is can be seen at 3D Systems’ headquarters in South Carolina. There the company has dozens of machines lined up to receive orders from customers via its 3D-printing service arm. Technicians stand in front of computers and try to figure out which products can be printed together most efficiently. It’s basically just as fast to print lots of things as it is to print one thing， so you want to line up products that can fit geometrically alongside each other and maximize the amount of printing done per run.

Much of this process is done manually， with technicians twisting objects around on a screen to see how they fit together. When the actual print is complete， the technicians carry the parts back to a different room to manually clean them off and manually pack them. STORY：?Howie Choset， Robot-Snake Charmer

To the extent that there are big price/performance advances taking place today， they are happening at such companies as Shapeways. Based in New York， the company operates about 10 3D printers at factories in Europe and the U.S. People go to its website， pick objects they want， and Shapeways prints them and mails them. The company has developed its own algorithms to automate how products are arranged in the 3D printers and has more automated shipping systems. “The manual process that used to take one technician two to three hours now takes place in the background，” says Peter Weijmarshausen， chief executive officer at Shapeways.

自動翻譯僅供參考

研發(fā)的匱乏可能會扼殺3D打印淘金熱

去年，3D系統(tǒng)（DDD），工業(yè)和消費者對3D打印機的制造商的股價上漲了270％。這些收益轉(zhuǎn)向3D Systems公司的股票進入2012年表現(xiàn)最好的之一，在擴大3D打印技術(shù)的投資者的興趣。 2013年的問題將是利益是否能容納的投資者，被他們一直在閱讀有關(guān)3D打印技術(shù)的熱情，遇到一些對這些機器的市場的現(xiàn)實。

（鄉(xiāng)親只是來加快速度就這個話題可以檢查出一個輪廓，我寫的3D系統(tǒng)和3D打印，去年年初，那些誰讀它，并投資可在以后感謝我。）

3D系統(tǒng)使得其錢賣大打印機希望炮制出零件的快速原型公司的絕大多數(shù)。航空和汽車企業(yè)一直這項技術(shù)的長期用戶。今天又何嘗不是如此，是消費電子公司，甚至做正畸牙套定制。對于所有2011年，3D Systems公司公布的收入230400000美元。一個塊（137300000美元）來自銷售實際機器，而第二塊（93100000美元）來自賣什么的金額專有塑料和粉末的進入機器，就像惠普（HPQ）出售碳粉和墨水其打印機的客戶。

故事：布雷松佩蒂斯：3D打印的第一個名人

這里的難題：3D系統(tǒng)只花了14300000美元研究和開發(fā)在2011年這是收入只有區(qū)區(qū)6％。它的主要競爭對手Stratasys公司（SSYS）公布2011營收155900000美元，花了14400000美元研發(fā)。

退一步，想想這些總計為一分鐘，您可能會離開心灰意冷。 3D打印正確地被標(biāo)榜為技術(shù)的最令人興奮的領(lǐng)域之一，它只是不接受投資，你會期望的水平。

用3D打印由最容易被忽視的一個主要問題是，有沒有摩爾定律型力學(xué)底層技術(shù)。融合背后的粉末用激光或塑料熔化，并通過噴嘴擠壓它的物理構(gòu)成上，在這你可以打印對象的速度受到嚴重限制。一旦你已經(jīng)申請了一層塑料，打印機必須花時間來移動和調(diào)整的平臺支持的對象。

您可以添加一個或兩個噴嘴，以加快工作，但是這是一個相去甚遠晶體管的數(shù)量每18個月翻一番一個芯片上，或硬盤驅(qū)動器上存儲的兩倍。有可能來一個壯觀的進步改變這些公式，但似乎沒有人發(fā)現(xiàn)任何尚未。它似乎是不可能的研發(fā)今天的3D打印機，3D系統(tǒng)，Stratasys公司和德國的主要制定者花在EOS-將是足以讓了一個意想不到的，價格指數(shù)每性能助推器。

只是如何過時的技術(shù)，可以看出，在3D Systems公司的總部設(shè)在南卡羅來納州的證據(jù)。目前公司擁有數(shù)十名排隊通過它的3D打印服務(wù)手臂接收來自客戶的訂單的機器。技術(shù)人員站在電腦前，并試圖找出哪些產(chǎn)品可以最有效地一起打印。它基本上是一樣快，打印很多東西，因為它是打印的一件事，所以要排隊，可以容納幾何彼此一起，最大限度地提高印刷每次運行做了多少產(chǎn)品。

這一流程是手工完成，與技術(shù)人員，扭曲在物體在屏幕上看到他們是如何結(jié)合在一起的。當(dāng)實際打印完成后，技術(shù)人員攜帶件返還給不同的房間進行人工清洗并手動收拾他們。

故事：豪伊Choset，機器人耍蛇人

為了有今天發(fā)生大的價格/性能提升的程度，它們發(fā)生在這樣的公司如Shapeways?？偛吭O(shè)在紐約，公司業(yè)務(wù)在歐洲和美國人民的工廠約10 3D打印機去它的網(wǎng)站上，挑選他們想要的對象，Shapeways打印他們和他們的郵件。該公司已經(jīng)開發(fā)了自己的算法來自動完成產(chǎn)品如何被安排在3D打印機并自動多運輸系統(tǒng)。 “這本手冊的過程，過去需要一名技術(shù)人員兩到三個小時，現(xiàn)在發(fā)生在后臺，”彼得Weijmarshausen，在Shapeways首席執(zhí)行官說。