One major advantage that helps us at 3DPrint.com in analyzing the additive manufacturing (AM) market is our direct access to data from industry consultancy AM Research, 3DPrint’s sister company. The intelligence provided by AM Research’s EVP, Scott Dunham, helps us stay focused on the most relevant themes and provides our commentary with the objective grounding that results in genuinely actionable information.
While the insights that consultancies deliver aren’t free, sometimes they are! On March 24, for instance, Scott broke down his comprehensive view of the AM industry’s 2025 activity, along with a preview of what he thinks the industry can expect in 2026, and even a glimpse of the potential for 2027. If you missed the webinar, don’t worry: you can still watch it here, and I highly recommend that you do.
There are two key elements to Scott’s perspective that I think set him apart as an analyst. For one thing, he’s simply been doing this just about as long as anyone else has, which means that his views are informed by the AM industry’s long-run trajectory, not speculation built on short-term noise. Secondly, the data drives his outlook, not the other way around. When there’s a momentous shift in the data that warrants adjusting his big-picture view of the industry, he works tirelessly to incorporate the new reality.
That’s an angle that will play a big role in how AM Research presents its data going forward, starting with the 2025 results and the 2026 preview: for the first time, AM Research is including breakout numbers for maritime and defense in its datasets. Anyone following the industry knows how significant it is to gain transparency on this particular market segment.
Meanwhile, Scott’s overall findings illustrate that, based on the second half of 2025, there is a broad-based foundation for the AM industry’s current growth trajectory that hasn’t been there for some time. Whether you’re mentally organizing the industry in terms of a division between services, hardware sales, or materials, or you’re more specifically interested in the comparison between metals and polymers, or whether your primary question is about which verticals are gaining the most traction, by the end of last year, AM industry growth was remarkably consistent across-the-board.
Some of the key details include:
- A projection of 18% YOY growth for 2026, with current projections for 2027 coming in slightly higher
- Some of the industry’s biggest metal powder suppliers are experiencing a major backlog on their order books, signaling sustained reshoring demand
- Increasing demand for large-format components in both metals and polymers, reinforcing the sense of a maturing AM ecosystem globally
Notably, despite the volatility of the current pace of geopolitical change — a factor that has tended to stall AM’s continuous progress in the past more than it has catalyzed that progress — it looks like international trade dynamics and the state of AM’s capabilities may finally be in alignment. That is, in previous phases of AM’s history, a Q1 like what we’ve experienced so far would’ve rendered an outlook on the previous year virtually moot by the time it could be published. In 2026, however, the setup from the second half of 2025 seems to foreshadow that the industry will keep pushing in the same direction in the years ahead.
Watch the webinar here and judge for yourself. It’s a rare opportunity to get a year’s worth of intel in only an hour.