Hi ! 5-Axis 3D-Printing is quiet appealing for different purposes: surface slicing, support reduction, engineering the anisotropy of layers to improve part strength or other properties.

This morning I saw that a Polish company called Verashape built one for FDM:
- https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/verashape-launches-open-innovation-program-vshaper-5-axis-3d-printing-129579/
- http://vshaper.com/en/3d-printers/5-axis-machine/

Still, why nobody is already successful from a business point of view with such thing ? We know already how to build 5-Axis Mills and Super Fast Machining Centres.
My answer is very simple: **software**. 
Even for 5-Axis so far I do not know any true open source CAM software that handles it for the continuous case. Also, there is a kind of segmentation in the 5-Axis CNC CAM market due to different algorithms needed according to the kind of parts you produce (turbines, impellers, ...)

To try to tackle this software bottleneck, the Polish company launched an "open-innovation" program.
http://vshaper.com/en/news/vshaper-open-innovation-program-launch/, they think that they can make the machine available for 2019. 

My 2 cents point of view is that it will be a failure that nobody will care about.
Why ? 
- It will attract only Research people in the best case: first goal of a Research person is to produce articles/papers and not to develop a product, which is what they are probably looking for.
- The time line, 2 years is nothing and not enough to develop even a prototype with a killer team, I speak from an experience point of view. The design and research space is very huge when you are adding those 2 additional axis, also there are additional difficulties with respect to 5 Axis CNC milling. From Research point of view, 2 years is not even large enough to finance a PhD student in CS (minimum 3 years).
- It is war time in the 3D Printing Industry, how crazy can be a company to share its knowledge if it has a "working" continuous 5-Axis slicer (face indexing is relatively easy and it is not bringing much). Such kind of hardware is just a commodity and the real hardwork is done on the software, this is why people pay a lot for the 5 Axis CAM software.
- Also, there are other techniques and materials that will enable further speed up, quality finish and strength improvements. The slicing software using the existing horizontal plane evolves too and it enables additional improvements.

This is not something new, there are other 5 or 6 machines that exist, and probably you did not hear about it since...
- CNC Style 5 Axis 3D Printer from Norway
  -  http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150704-an-amazing-open-source-5-axis-3d-printer-built-by-university-of-oslo-master-student.html
  -   https://youtu.be/mqDrHYVOTVA
- 5 Axis Maker from UK  (2015)
  - https://3dprint.com/16074/5axismaker-3d-printer/
  - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ADXZvjxpOEMDo5-nQ1PRA/videos
  - Still in research phase : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlghfOUjbUI
   - https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rqmpLeQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
- Hybrid 5 Axis CNC and 3D Printer from Japan  (2016)
  -  https://3dprint.com/132475/5-axis-3d-printer-japan/
   - https://youtu.be/L37IhrkVX04
 - 6 Axis 3D Printer from Switzerland (2017)
  - https://www.3dnatives.com/en/6-axis-3d-printer230320174/
  -  https://youtu.be/T_347m_lxes