If there was any doubt Wall Street is warming up to 3-D printing it was extinguished last week when Citi analyst Kenneth Wong initiated coverage of 3-D printer manufacturers Stratasys (SSYS) and 3D Systems (DDD), at the same time expressing in a client note that he believes the market for 3-D printing equipment and services will triple by 2018. The market "is on the cusp of seeing much broader adoption across more upstream production applications and the consumer end market," Wong wrote. Shares of Stratasys and 3-D Systems -- as well as others in the space -- spiked.

    "Increased utilization of existing systems as customers start to extend use case beyond small batch digital manufacturing" is behind this growth, Wong says. Or, more plainly, 3-D printers are becoming less expensive, easier to use, and applicable to more -- and more complex -- kinds of objects and designs. Factor in a confluence of other catalysts, like the expiration of key patents that currently discourage competition in the space, and 3-D printing is poised to explode in the next few years.

    Wong isn't the first analyst to make this observation, though for whatever reason his decidedly bullish client note found traction in the popular press, helping to buoy 3-D printing stocks for an afternoon. But has 3-D printing really reached its tipping point? To hear the hype machine tell it, the world is hurtling headlong into a 3-D printing revolution. But while cheaper printers, expiring patents, and a wider range of applications will certainly help drive the market -- and perhaps even triple the value of 3-D printing's nascent marketplace in the near term -- a desktop manufacturing revolution this is not. Here are five reasons why.

1. Patents will expire, but they're not what's holding 3-D printing back

    The patents set to expire in 2014 concern laser sintering, one of the oldest and lowest-cost 3-D printing technologies on the market. Laser sintering can produce high-resolution objects, good enough to be finished products in some cases. But though the cost of printing is low, the cost of the actual printers is quite high -- in the tens of thousands of dollars for industrial grade machines. A lack of competition caused by intellectual property protections keeps that price high, the theory goes, and when those patents expire next year the price of these machines will drop, increasing access to laser sintering technology and lowering the overall cost of manufacturing by 3-D printer.

    However, the idea that expiring patents will fuel an explosion in 3-D printing suffers from a key flaw: Patents aren't really what's holding the 3-D printing market back.

    "The reason 3-D printing isn't bigger than it is today is largely not because of intellectual property issues or who owns what patents," says Duncan Stewart, director of technology, media, and telecommunications research at Deloitte Canada. "It's the fact that for most of the things that we need in the world today, 3-D printers are too slow, too expensive, or that -- because of the limitations in the kinds of materials they can use -- they cannot easily make the things that you want to. The single biggest factor keeping 3-D printing smaller than it might otherwise be up until now has been the utility of 3-D printers, not the patents."

    The expiration of patents addresses one of those issues -- expense -- but it won't solve the more fundamental problem of functionality, Stewart says. "When the patents come off, that will help, but it doesn't suddenly transform the market."  

    如果说曾有人怀疑华尔街正热衷于炒作3D打印概念，那上周随着花旗集团（Citi）分析师肯尼思•王开始关注3D打印机生产商Stratasys公司和3D Systems公司，这种怀疑自然就烟消云散了。在一份客户报告中，肯尼思同时还表示，他深信3D打印设备及服务市场到2018年规模将增长到现在的三倍。他写道，这个市场“正蓄势待发，将有更多上游生产应用及终端消费市场大规模采用3D技术”。话音刚落，Stratasys和3-D Systems——以及该领域的其他厂商——的股票就应声飞涨。

    肯尼思•王表示，这个增长背后的推动力量是“随着客户开始不再局限于小批量数字化生产而扩大应用范围时，现有系统的使用率就会随之提高”。或者说得更明白些，3D打印机的价格正变得日愈低廉，使用更容易，同时适用于打印越来越复杂的物品和设计方案。同时还存在其他推动因素，比如随着目前这个领域一些限制竞争的关键专利到期，3D打印必将在未来几年里迎来爆发式的增长。

    肯尼思•王并不是第一个做出这个论断的分析师，不过不管出于什么原因，他断言看涨的客户报告还是受到了大众媒体的追捧，让3D打印类的股票当天下午一路飘红。不过，3D打印真的已经到了发展的引爆点吗？要按造势媒体的说法，全世界都正在朝着3D打印革命的方向一路飞奔。但是，尽管更廉价的打印机、即将到期的专利和更广泛的应用都确实有助于推动市场发展——也许也能在未来几年使目前尚处发端的3D打印市场规模翻上两番——不过要说这就是桌面生产革命还为时尚早。下面我们来分析一下原因：

1.相关专利确实即将到期，但它们并不是阻碍3D打印发展的因素。

    2014年将到期的专利是激光烧结技术，这是目前市场上3D打印技术中历史最长、成本最低的专利。激光烧结技术能生产出高分辨率的物品，在某些情况下可与制成品相媲美。不过尽管打印成本不高，但这种打印机的成本却十分高昂——工业级的打印机造价高达数万美元。按照现在的说法，由于存在知识产权保护而导致的竞争不足推高了造价，但当这些专利明年到期后这种打印机就会降价，使激光烧结的使用率增加，同时降低3D打印机的整体生产成本。

    但是，认为专利到期就将推动3D打印爆发发展的观点却隐含着一个关键问题：专利本身并不是阻碍3D打印市场发展的根本因素。

    德勤加拿大分公司（Deloitte Canada）的技术、传媒和通讯部门研究总监邓肯•斯图尔特表示：“之所以说3D打印市场今后并不会比现在更大主要不是因为知识产权问题或专利权归属问题。主要是因为，对生产我们现在所需要的绝大多数东西来说，3D打印机速度太慢，成本太高，或是——因为它们所能使用的原材料有诸多限制——它们无法方便地造出我们想要的东西。使3D打印市场无法发展到预期规模的最主要的因素始终在于3D打印机的易用性本身，而不是专利。”

    斯图尔特称，这些专利到期能解决成本问题，但却无法解决功能性这个更为根本的问题，“这些专利到期后确实会有所帮助，但却无法让市场发生翻天覆地的变化。”    

2. Cheaper printers could have a cooling effect on the market

    There's no question that the technology underlying 3-D printing has come a long way over the last half decade, allowing printers in the sub-$10,000 price range to churn out high-quality, high-resolution objects in a range of materials. But at the lower end of the price spectrum there could be a problem, says Smartech Markets Publishing President and CEO Lawrence Gasman. The emergence of sub-$1,000 printers -- and even sub-$500 printers -- aimed at the consumer market has placed 3-D printing within the grasp of just about anyone. The problem, Gasman says, is that the lower-end printers aren't very good.

    "There's beginning to be a low end to it, something like a $400 printer," Gasman says. "And one concern we have for this space, and it's shared across the industry, if you set the expectation high for what these things can do and someone buys one for $350 and finds that it's next to useless, that will put them off the whole concept."

    You can do amazing things with a printer that costs about two-and-a-half-grand, Gasman says -- a relatively inexpensive machine as far as 3-D printers go, but the kind of expense that warrants a discussion in most households. And will consumers want a $350 machine dedicated to making trinkets? Until quality comes downhill along with cost, widespread adoption by consumers could be muted.

3. Intellectual property could still cause problems for the industry

    The field of 3-D printing is broad enough that the industry doesn't have to worry too much about regulation at this point, Gasman says. Any regulation that might be passed would likely target an application (like printing firearms, for instance) rather than the technology itself. But that doesn't mean litigation and other legal issues might not slow 3-D printing's acceleration. There's simply too much money at stake.

    Industries worth tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars could feel threatened by 3-D printing and the ways in which it might circumvent their intellectual property protections. And while the legal waters get murky here, that might not stop companies in, say, the automotive parts business (valued at something like $140 billion annually) from moving to protect their interests via legal channels, tying up some 3-D printing technologies or applications indefinitely. The issues run deeper than mere intellectual property theft. Warranties, licensing of designs, liability ("what if my 3-D printed part breaks and destroys my $10 million dollar machine?" Stewart says) -- from a legal standpoint there hasn't even been a first, much less final, word on this.

    "I have talked to lawyers about this, and their eyes spin in their heads like the dials on a slot machine," Stewart says. "This is an enormous issue. It is worth tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, and nobody knows how it's going to work out, how it's going to be enforced, or even what the law is."

4. 3-D printing is not the savior of manufacturing

    Or the "factory for the home" -- at least not in the next five years. While 3-D printing technology can make product designers and manufacturers more efficient, it's remarkably slow. It's great for mass customization, Gasman says, but wholly implausible for mass production. Nor is it capable of producing the kinds of things that now rule the average person's life.

2.廉价3D打印机降低了市场热度。

    毫无疑问，支撑3D打印的技术过去五年来获得了长足发展，使一万美元以下的打印机也能利用多种原材料成批打出高质量、高分辨率的物品。但据Smartech Markets Publishing公司总裁兼首席执行官劳伦斯•盖思曼称，廉价的打印机依然存在问题。售价低于1000美元（甚至500美元）的3D打印机瞄准的是普通消费者市场。盖思曼表示，关键问题是，这些低端打印机的质量并不理想。

    盖思曼称：“现在开始出现了一些较低价的、如400美元一台的打印机。但我们，以及全行业对这类产品的一大担忧是，如果有人对这类机器期望值过高，在花了350美元买回去一台后却发现它几乎毫无用处，那就会让这类消费者从此对这种概念产品敬而远之了。”

    盖思曼表示，一台2500美元（对3D打印机来说已经不算贵了）左右的打印机确实能打出令人惊艳的东西来，但这个价位对绝大多数家庭来说都不是个小数目。而消费者会为了打点小玩意儿，就想买个350美元的机器吗？只有价格下降，但打印品质仍能保证的情况下，才可能有更多消费者买3D打印机。

3.知识产权仍会诱发各种行业问题。

    盖思曼称，3D打印涉及的领域非常广泛，因此这个行业暂时不需要考虑太多的监管问题。即使要通过某项监管措施，那也会是针对某种应用（比如打印武器）而非技术本身。但这并不意味着诉讼及其他法律问题完全不会阻碍3D打印加速发展的脚步。因为3D打印涉及的资金非常庞大。

    价值上万亿美元的多个行业可能会感到3D打印以及它可能绕过知识产权保护而构成的威胁。尽管相关法律问题十分复杂难缠，但这也难以阻止一些公司，比如汽车零部件行业（每年产值为1400亿美元）通过法律渠道保护自己的利益，从而让3D打印技术或其应用长期寸步难行。相比知识产权盗用而言，还有些问题层次更深。担保、设计授权、相关责任（斯图尔特就说：“如果3D打印的零部件损坏，最终毁了我价值一千万美元的机器怎么办？”）——从法律观点看，相关问题还远不止于这些。

    斯图尔特说：“我跟一些律师讨论过这个问题，结果他们的眼珠就像自动售货机上的转盘一样转个不停。这是个很大的问题。它会涉及到上千亿、甚至上万亿美元，而目前没人知道该怎么解决，相关法律如何执行，甚至连该制订什么法律大家都没概念。”

4.3D打印不是制造业的救星。

    它也不会是“家庭工厂”——至少未来五年里不会是。尽管3D打印技术能提高产品设计师和生产商的工作效率，但它的速度实在太慢了。盖思曼表示，这种技术对大规模定制来说非常适合，但用到大规模生产上就太不靠谱了，而且它也没法生产普通人的日常生活用品。

    "In every kind of way a 3-D printer could've gotten better in the last three years, they have improved," Stewart says. But they still can't make silicon chips, and they probably never will be able to. People spend roughly $5,000 per year on chips, largely without realizing it, and the inability to produce electronics means the concept of the "factory for the home" will remain limited in scope.

5. Even if the 3-D printing market triples, it's still a really small market

    There's no reason not to be optimistic about the growth potential in the 3-D printing space, Stewart says. Both he and Smartech's Gasman believe Wong's assessment is correct -- the market, currently valued at around $2 billion, will be worth roughly $6 billion by 2018. The companies in the space are poised to grow, and the customer base will likely continue its rapid expansion. But a $6 billion industry is still just a $6 billion industry when compared to something like automotive parts or light bulbs or airliners, Stewart says. One reason 3-D printing is able to grow so fast is because it's so small.

    "When you look at the 3-D industry tripling by 2018, that's enormous growth," he says. "But it remains a drop in the bucket compared to the global industry of making things."    

    斯图尔特说：“过去三年里3D打印机的表现已经到了一个极限，它们已有大幅改进。”但是它们还是没法打出芯片来，而且可能永远也做不到。人们每年在芯片上要花大概5000美元，但大多数时候都没有意识到这一点，而无法打出电子产品就意味着所谓的“家庭工厂”的概念将永远局限在有限的领域。

5. 就算3D打印市场翻了两番，它的规模也还是微不足道。

    斯图尔特表示，没有理由不对3D打印领域所蕴含的潜力抱有乐观的预期。他和Smartech的盖思曼都对肯尼思•王的判断深信不疑——这个目前市值约20亿美元的市场到2018年价值将达约60亿美元。相关公司一定会实现增长，而客户群也可能会快速扩张。但斯图尔特也说了，跟汽车零部件、灯泡或民用飞机市场相比，60亿美元不过就是60亿美元，不值一提。而这个市场之所以能快速增长的原因之一就在于它本身太小了。

    斯图尔特说：“3D打印行业到2018年将翻两番，这看起来真是个巨大的增长。但是跟全球那些巨无霸般的制造业相比，这只不过是九牛一毛而已。”（财富中文网）

    译者：清远