The rise of 3-D printing

Photo provided to China Daily

The company's main business is laminated object manufacturing 3-D printers, and it produces 5,000 printers annually, with LOM printers making up more than half of the total. The company has enjoyed stable sales growth in recent years.

In 2014, revenues in China's 3-D printing industry reached about 4 billion yuan ($638 million), accounting for 10 percent of the world's total.

Domestic companies made around 1.5 billion yuan, while foreign companies from places such as the US, Europe and Japan took in 2.5 billion yuan, according to Luo Jun, president of the World 3-D Printing Technology Industry Alliance.

Luo predicts that in 2015, China will take up a 15-to 20-percent market share and in 2017, domestic 3-D printing revenues will surpass 10 billion yuan.

If China wants to perform better in the world's arena, more needs to be done, says Lian Ning. "I think the most important thing for the development of the domestic 3-D printing industry is to develop additive materials," he says.

Lian says the additive material polyvinyl chloride used in LOM 3-D printers had to be imported from Europe until 2014, when Lian's engineering team succeeded in developing the material.

"It is not a difficult technology, but when I tried to look for researchers to develop this material in 2008, they usually asked me two questions: Is the material very cutting-edge? Is it going to be huge in the market?" Lian says. "And when they couldn't get positive answers, they wouldn't do it.

"It's not because the technologies have not been or cannot be developed in China. As a matter of fact, we have a lot of patents but ... they have not been transferred into production.

"Without the development of additive materials, China's 3-D printing industry won't achieve good development," he says.

Another issue for the development of the industry is application, Lian says. "People believe that 3-D printing can do anything, based on media reports. However, once they learn more about the technology ... they discover that they don't even understand what it can do."

AOD is cooperating with middle schools around the country to introduce the technology to teenagers. "Planting the seed of the technology in the mind of young people is very important," Lian says.

"If they learn it at school, when they enter society and need to solve a problem, 3-D printing technology will automatically pop into their heads as a possible solution."