If you’ve been wondering if 3D printing will live up to its advertising and is worthy of a place in your portfolio, you will be interested to know the emerging sector recently received a couple votes of confidence.
One vote of confidence comes from the U.S. Department of Defense, the other from ARK Investment Management, whose thematic and actively managed ETFs have been the talk of the investment world, some of which racked up returns in excess of 100 percent this past year.
3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing that builds objects layer-by-layer, as opposed to traditional subtractive manufacturing that removes material from larger blocks, a report from ARK Invest explains. 3D printing collapses the time between design and production, shifts power to designers, and reduces supply chain complexity, at a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing.
Let’s start with the Defense Department, which has inked a $1.6 million contract with The ExOne