Abstract:    The technical development path analysis, to a certain extent, can trace, discover, identify the development direction of technology and support the technology forecasting. Currently, disruptive technology is the focus attention of national strategy, analyzing characteristics and exploring regularities from the perspective of development path can serve the development of disruptive technology. This paper uses the citation network analysis method that related with the tripartite structure model, combine the relationship between the tripartite group and the network traversal weights, constructed a model for measuring the degree of technological disruption of 3D printing based on the importance of network papers, the network characteristics and path characteristics. Studies have shown that the established measurement method for disruptive technology development can dynamically measure the importance of a stable 3D printing technology. Through tripartite analysis, network analysis, and path analysis, it is shown that in a disruptive process of 3D printing, it has repeatedly disrupted its internal sub-technology; the statistical peak of the importance degree of 3D printing technology appeared in 2003, steadily increased before 2003, and remained stable after 2003; in terms of internal sub-technology, through main path analysis, the "selective laser sintering" sub-technology of the 3D printing technology has experienced many disruptions at the level of material application.
    In this study, the measurement analysis of the path of disruptive technology development is based on citation network analysis, which is carried out from four aspects: degree of disruption, tripartite group analysis, network feature analysis, and path feature analysis. The main research steps are as follows:
   (1) Combining previous research results, from the perspective of technology development path, introduce the concept of disruptive degree, measure the disruptive degree of disruptive technology in the network, to judge the technology under relative and historical conditions development characteristics.
   (2) Build an overall paper citation network containing time partitioned files and technical topics, using the node traversal weight algorithm and main path analysis to establish the relationship between the tripartite network and the node traversal weight algorithm, and analyze the characteristics of the technical tripartite group under dynamic conditions and network characteristics.
    (3) According to the main path analysis method, extract the main path of sub-technology development from the citation network, and analyze the typical path characteristics of the technology.
   In terms of research conclusions, from the analysis of the degree of disruptiveness, the shape of the disruptiveness curve of 3D printing is similar to that of Gartner′s technology maturity curve, both of which are characterized by the presence of a rising peak, and then slowly rebound after a decline. From the analysis of the tripartite group, the type of tripartite group with a large positive deviation from the expected value determines the core structure of the tripartite group in the network; both the overall and detailed networks show that the 9-030T tripartite group is the main structure of the network. Then when calculating the node traversal weights, its influence degree is also the largest. This is also the bridge and foundation for this study to connect the degree of disruption with the analysis of network characteristics. 
    In terms of research enlightenment, focus on analyzing the development of disruptive technologies from a dynamic process and a relative perspective. Disruptive technology is a dynamic and relative concept. A technology is called disruptive technology. Firstly, there must be a comparison object. Because to talk about disruptive technology, it is often easy to fall into the dilemma of defining the concept of disruptive technology. Secondly, to analyze the dynamic characteristics, combine the dynamics of disruptive technology, and study disruptive technology, it is necessary to take disruptive objects and peripheral environment into consideration at the same time, and develop corresponding research methods and means. In terms of researching the applicability of data, this method selects the paper data as the source, constructs the 9-030T tripartite citation network and calculates the degree of disruption, analyzes the network traversal weights, and analyzes the data source of the main path. Correspondingly, if you can handle some of the constraints, you can also use the citation relationship of patents and open-source software to conduct similar research.

Key words: disruptive technology, 3D printing, tripartite structure model, network traversal weight, main path analysis