In Ireland, the 3D Printing Market Global Forecast to 2023 report predicts the 3D printing market to expand to $32.78 billion by 2023. The expansion is an increase of over 25% and mostly due to an expected decrease in manufacturing costs and increase in government investments and new innovative printing materials, among other factors. North America currently leads the 3D printing market in terms of market share.
While plastic is the largest share of 3D printing material, they predict that other new non-fossil fuel based materials will help increase demand for markets like healthcare, electronics, education, and food and culinary. Some of the challenges it mentions are expensive material cost, size limitations and lack of standard process control.