We asked 13 movers, shakers and thinkers from different industry sectors what they reckon the big trends, developments and challenges will be in their sector in the coming year. This is what they had to say:
Alice Taylor – CEO, MakieLab
2013 is going to be a year where we see a bunch more consumer-facing 3D printed things hitting the market, some of them ‘internet of things’ capable too. That’s pretty exciting.
And it’s the year of FDM nipping at the heels of SLS: now that a well-calibrated sub £2k printer can print at 80 microns, SLS needs to start to be really quite scared.
I want to see plastic colours hitting the market for SLS, but I’m not confident we’ll see much in this area, and this is SLS’s Achilles heel, I’m sad about 3D Systems going after FormLabs, so I’m hoping there’ll be some patent suit failings in 2013 too and that the likes of Form – innovative, agile, beautiful design sense – aren’t crushed by the system.
