Tracing the Evolution of 3-D Printing Technology in China Using LDA-Based Patent Abstract Mining

3-D printing is an additive manufacturing process, which enables products to be custom designed. Obtaining the evolution trend and identifying the potential R&D hotspots of 3-D printing technology are important strategic issues for both nations and enterprises. In this article, a combination method is proposed using the Viterbi algorithm to identify technological terms in patents, using the latent Dirichlet allocation model to capture potential technological topics in patents, and using the hidden Markov model to analyze the distribution and evolution pattern of the technological topics. Based on the results, technological topics and future R&D hotspots in 3-D printing are identified. Among the technological topics, extrusion devices and laser powder molding are gradually losing R&D; model acquisition, extrusion devices, rotary printing, and denture are the key topics of technological evolution that are difficult to overcome; laser focusing, print head, color printing, recyclable, feeding, control panel, and denture will become the focus of R&D in the near future. Finally, a comparison and experiments are given to demonstrate the plausibility of our method.