Formnext Frankfurt, the most important AM exhibition in Europe
With a total of 29,581 visitors, the industry event’s number of visitors increased by 65.6% compared to the 2021 edition that hosted 17,859 visitors and is gradually returning to the numbers achieved in 2019. Formnext 2022 counted 802 exhibitors including a few of our own Agoria members such as Aerosint, Anyshape, Buhlmann (via Desktop Metal), Diabatix, HP, Oerlikon, Renishaw, Siemens, Twikit, ZiggZagg.
Formnext is the most important AM exhibition in Europe, for good reason. In 2020, the EU accounted for an estimated 29% of installed AM systems worldwide, contributing to over 27% of global sales of AM systems. Leading markets in EU’s additive manufacturing industry include Germany, France, and Italy, with growing markets in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Belgium, among others. (Source: Wohler’s Report 2021)
Improved and new materials, machines, software solutions, post-processing solutions and the many showcased applications make the evolution of the AM industry tangible when wandering through the 4 big halls covering a total of 51,148 m². Whether all these show-cases are real business cases? Maybe not, or possibly not yet, they nevertheless give a clear direction of where the AM industry aims for - time will tell.
For instance, large-scale printing remained a non-starter for many years, given that it was too expensive to consider using the systems of the time and AM technology had simply not yet developed properly for large applications. Today, large-scale printing has its place in the wide range of AM possibilities. There have never been more robot arms and huge print containers at the exhibition, showing off their reach, literally, with polymers and metals, mainly using Fused Filament or Wire Arc technology.
Design freedom in AM remains an important differentiator for value creation… but it is definitely not the only one. More than ever, the promise of additive manufacturing to be the technology of choice for decentralizing manufacturing processes and production, and a key enabler in making supply chains more resilient, facilitating resource and energy-efficient production, is a pertinent topic. It can change many businesses and seems already to be doing so.
