Polymers

Additive manufacturing, 3D printing, or rapid prototyping, as it was called in the beginning, was invented as a family of technologies to shape polymers and make prototypes.

First, it was photopolymers with SLA stereolithography, and then thermoplastics, with FDM material extrusion and SLS powder bed fusion. Today, as the entire additive manufacturing industry transitions towards additive mass production, polymers and polymer hardware technologies are once again leading the way and remain at the forefront of the industry.

According to VoxelMatters’ latest Polymer AM Market report, based on an updated panel of 816, verified, individually surveyed and studied polymer AM companies, the core polymer AM market (hardware, materials and services) generated over $7.4 billion in 2024. The market is expected to grow to $46 billion by 2034 at a 20.1% CAGR.

Today polymer 3D printing processes can utilize various materials, including hybrid versions that span different material families and are each available in multiple forms. In 3D printing, these include three families of polymers: thermoplastics, photopolymers and thermosets. These can be 3D printed, as their forms include liquid resins, solid filaments, pellets and powders.

Generally speaking, polymers are materials made up of repeating units called monomers, which are linked to each other through chemical bonding. A single polymer molecule may contain millions of monomers, and each monomer requires a double bond or at least two functional groups to attach to two more monomers. The attached monomers also have functional groups to attract further monomers. This process is known as polymerization and creates a macromolecule or a polymer chain. The arrangement of the polymer chains determines the molecular structure of a polymer, and the arrangement can be either amorphous or crystalline.

Today, polymers are heavily used in 3D printing for conventional applications such as prototyping, physical modeling and tooling, but they are now also being used increasingly for serial production applications, primarily via LFAM/filament extrusion hardware farms, high-throughput powder bed fusion processes, and via high-speed photopolymerization processes with reactive materials.