China: China's 3D printing speeds up expansion across multiple sectors.

Storyline China's 3D printing speeds up expansion across multiple sectors China is expanding the ways it uses 3D printing, from high-end manufacturing to daily consumer goods. Once a laboratory novelty, sectors are scaling up their use of 3D printers to make products that are small batch, customized, and structurally complex. In the consumer goods sector, products that emphasize design and lightweight properties, like watch cases and shoe midsoles, are emerging as easy entry points for 3D printing. In the medical sector 3D printing is used for things that are highly personalized like customized implants, dental restorations, hearing aids, and surgical tools. Because 3D printing can create parts within parts, and so-called "internal structures", they're being used in the industrial and aerospace sectors as well. Li Fangzheng, executive director and general manager, Equipment Industry Engineering Research Institute of Industry and Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.： "In the future, with continuous breakthroughs in technological progress, cost reduction, and efficiency improvement, 3D printing technology is shifting from an option to a necessity in manufacturing processes. At the same time, 3D printing technology and products are gradually moving from factories to thousands of households." China's domestically manufactured 3D printers are making a name for themselves on the global stage accounting for about 90 percent of the world's consumer-grade 3D printers. Data shows that in Q1 this year China exported 100 percent more 3D printers than last year at upwards of 2.4 million units. [Restrictions: No access Chinese mainland]