MakerGear! HP! Anet! New York City! Some intriguing new developments in the 3D printing industry, if the latest 3D Hubs Trend Report is any indication.
It’s the beginning of a New Year and a new quarter, and for 3D printing fanatics that means only one thing. It’s time for another 3D Hubs Trend Report.
The 3D Hubs Trend Report is put together every three months using data from 6,000 active international service providers. Between them, they fabricate more than 200,000 3D printed parts every quarter. In turn, customers will routinely rate and review the quality of the prints they have received.
The scale of this activity is truly unique; studying the data provides an extensive overview of the latest trends in both consumer and industrial 3D printing.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the latest findings from Q1 2018 spanning October to December.
The big news is that the Makergear M2 has leapfrogged from the #6 position to #1. It has a 4.89 print quality rating from 133 reviews.
The Ultimaker 2+ made an even bigger jump coming from #9 to #2. The machine has a improved print quality rating of 4.88 compared to its 4.79 in Q4.
Rounding out the top three is the Original Prusa i3 MK2, with a 4.86 print quality rating from 813 reviews. Significantly, these are the biggest quantity of reviews in the desktop chart.
Also of interest is the first appearance of the Anet A8 in the chart at #6. It joins the Creality CR-10 as an extremely low-budget 3D printer kit capable of delivering satisfactory results. At least, as far as the 3D Hubs community is concerned.
But it’s been a rocky quarter for the Formlabs Form 2, occupying perhaps its lowest position in the top ten since the trend report began. But with a difference of less than 0.09 between #1 to #10, it’s worth noting that the quality band between the machines in the list has become extremely narrow.
3D Hubs Trend Report Shows Continued Growth for HP MultiJet Fusion
For industrial additive manufacturing, the HP MJF 4200 is now the #1 most used industrial machine on 3D Hubs, moving up from #2 in Q4 and creating over 2,000 parts.
In terms of geographical hot-spots, New York has reclaimed their position as the #1 Print City in the world. Better luck next quarter, London. There’s also good news for the US West Coast, where California dominates the list with 40% of the cities listed in their state (San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Berkeley).
Amsterdam is another capital city flying the flag for the European continent, whilst Toronto rounds out the top ten as the only city representing Canada.
For this quarter four areas of data where omitted. The reason for this change is down to a 3D Hubs waiting list being introduced to balance supply and demand in various regions. Categories such as Trending Printers, Printer Model distribution and Printer Manufacturer distribution are still featured on their blog.
You can read the full 3D Hubs Trend Report for all these insights and more, while reports from previous quarters can be found here. Check back in three months for the next exciting update.
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