A New Kind of Design

Although three-dimensional printing isn't a new process by today's standards—it was first introduced in the mid-1980s—the number of companies that have built their entire business plan around that production method remains relatively small.

Three-dimensional printing is a rapid prototyping process that builds objects by slowly laying a material such as thermoset resin. Desktop 3-D printers are now relatively inexpensive. Some cost $10,000 or less, and some small companies are relying on them for specialized custom manufacturing.

Like other rapid prototyping processes, 3-D printing faces impediments to widespread business adoption: Part accuracy isn't perfect, the software that drives the process still needs improvement, and printed parts must undergo some form of post processing, said Ed Grenda, president of the consulting company Castle Island Co. of Arlington, Mass. He also maintains the Web site Worldwide Guide to Rapid Prototyping and founded Cambridge Technology Inc., a maker of optical scanning instrumentation that is now a division of Excel Laser.

Despite the drawbacks, some small entrepreneurial companies have based business plans on 3-D printing for the consumer market, he added.

„There's a middle ground where you'll find this stuff will be moreand more used, and that's by professionals who mediate between thefinal consumer and the technology,” Grenda said. „It's a pain tounderstand engineering-related stuff like tolerances. I'm the engineerand I don't want to design anything other than what I specialize in.”

Whether these companies fly or flag remains to be seen. According toTerry Wohlers, an industry consultant, these early companies still needto hammer out how they'll grow, beyond simply investing in more 3-Dprinters, and find a way to streamline back-end processes to make themcost-effective.

But those who follow the industry are watching them closely becausethese early businesses are laying the groundwork for other companieslooking to adopt 3-D printing.

For now, what these companies show is that 3-D printing has a placeas a cornerstone in a particular kind of new business model. TheInternet has leveled the playing field for these companies and allowedthem to move beyond the traditional role rapid prototyping has to playin customized medical implants and for part manufacture, Wohlers said.

He runs the consulting firm Wohlers Associates in Fort Collins,Colo., which follows developments in product design, prototyping, andmanufacturing. He also coordinates an annual international conferencedevoted to the latest developments in rapid prototyping, which is alsocalled additive fabrication. The most recent conference, held inDecember in Frankfurt, Germany, looked at these new types ofmanufacturing organizations. It studied their structures, the types ofproducts they offer, and how the companies manufacture and distributeproducts.

Out of the Computer

Prime examples are FigurePrints of Redmond, Wash., and Fabjectory ofVirginia Beach, Va. They both produce figurines based on online videogames. FigurePrints makes small, 3-D models of characters from theWorld of Warcraft, and Fabjectory does the corresponding service forplayers in the Second Life virtual world.

Fabjectory creates 3-D models of a client's avatar using screenshotstaken in Second Life. The founder of the two-year-old company, MichaelBuckabee, imports the shot into design software, then prints thefigures on a color 3-D printer from Z Corp. of Burlington, Mass.

Buckabee has said his business is targeted to the everyday consumer.Skilled engineers and designers could certainly design their ownavatars and send them to be created at a rapid-prototyping andinjection-molding fabricator such as Quickparts of Atlanta.

Ed Fries, who founded FigurePrints, is a former vice president ofgaming at Microsoft and a present-day World of Warcraft devotee. Hiscompany, launched in December 2007, creates five-inch-tall 3-D figuresof World of Warcraft players' characters. Within 12 hours after goinglive, the company received more than 4,000 requests for models, Friessaid.

Since launch, the company has fielded more than 100,000 requests andnow fulfills orders on a lottery basis. Potential customers sign up forthe lottery via e-mail and FigurePrints holds a monthly drawing todetermine which orders to fulfill, Wohlers said.

A handful of FigurePrints employees print the 3-D models on aboutfour Z Corp. color printers. A models, which sells for $129.95, plusshipping, takes 10 hours to produce. The company won't say how manythey produce each month.

Z Corp. quotes a price of approximately $50,000 each for the machines.

FigurePrints could very well serve as a bellwether for the growth ofsmall consumer companies centered on 3-D printing. Fries' company isintriguing and so far quite successful. But could it feasibly fulfillevery order with no need for a lottery? Wohlers will be watching growthwith interest.

To grow, Fries might bring in a full fleet of 3-D printers and hirea large staff to field requests and print models. But simply increasingbuild speed by adding more printers wouldn't ensure business growth.There are back-end considerations as well, Wohlers said.

„FigurePrints would need to receive these jobs from World ofWarcraft users, and then be able to automate that process so a humandoesn't have to review each one and make sure the model can be built,”Wohlers said.

Also, in creating realistic avatars, FigurePrints must overcome onesignificant barrier to entry for the consumer, rapid-prototyping-basedbusinesses: post processing, Grenda said. Today's rapid prototypesdon't look perfect—like the piece the consumer envisions—right out ofthe machine.

„You need to perform some kind of significant secondary operationsto it to improve the finish and add strength,” Grenda said. „Thematerials are porous and you'll have to do something to improve thefinish. And most of these secondary operations are messy.”

And they must be done cost-effectively if a company is going to grow its bottom line.

Traditionally, printed models have been dipped in an epoxy resin,Wohlers said. FigurePrints uses an automated system from xlaForm thatallows parts to be infused in bulk in a heating machine. This methodcuts processing time and labor costs, but is still time-consuming andallows processing only in batches.

Still, a few complaints about Figureprints' finish quality have beenlogged in the blogosphere. At least two early customers complained thattheir avatars looked dusty and said colors weren't bold and bright, aspromised. But those early complaints haven't been echoed of late.

Wohlers will be watching FigurePrints to gauge growth potential fora small business driving a new rapid prototyping business model.

„Rapid prototyping has traditionally been low-volume, high-marginbusiness, and FigurePrints is the inverse of that,” Wohlers said.„Maybe it's even no margin. We don't know yet.”

One-of-a-Kind Design

Wohlers is also watching Shapeways of Eindhoven in the Netherlands,which has married 3-D printing with the crowdsourcing model now beingblazed on the Internet. That model asks Internet users to design orcreate products and then rank the results.

At Shapeways, which is actually a business incubator sponsored byKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., consumers upload their own 3-Dmodels, which are then printed and shipped. Users can also purchasemodels.

Shapeways maintains several rapid prototyping machines including alaser sintering machine from Electro Optical Systems of Munich,Germany; a fused deposition machine from Stratasys of Minneapolis; anda 3-D desktop printer from Dimension 3D of Eden Prairie, Minn.

„The objects are scored like you'd score something on Amazon,”Wohlers said. „So people can get a feel for what others think abouttheir designs.”

Many designers create their models using the Sketchup or Rhinomodeling programs, and Shapeways offers its own Shapeways Creatorprogram.

It's too early to tell whether Shapeways will succeed and be spun off from Philips, Wohlers said.

„But the concept itself—the idea that anyone can create a design andbe able to receive it—will probably be successful,” he said.

The company will have to demonstrate it can expand beyond a servicebureau that prints consumer design into profitably selling user-createddesigns on the site. That may be a challenge, as many designs submittedto Shapeways likely won't be of top quality and would sell poorly,Wohlers said.

„Amateurish won't sell,” he cautioned.

Lionel Dean agrees. He intended his FutureFactories project as aone-year design residency at the University of Huddersfield inHuddersfield, England. Now, he has spun off the project into a businessdevoted to one-off designs created via rapid-prototyping methods. Abusiness of his type can be successful if for no other reason than lowoverhead, Dean said.

As chief designer at FutureFactories, Dean creates one-of-a-kindconsumer objects made via rapid prototyping methods such as metalsintering. Designs evolve over time, so each object, such as a piece ofjewelry or a headdress, is different. The aim is to combine the charmof craft production with the technical development and resolution ofmass-market consumer products, Dean said.

„It's cheap to do this stuff,” he said. „It costs the same toproduce two different variants as two identical ones: Theeconomies-of-scale rationale of serial production does not apply.”

Rapid prototyping technologies require no tooling investment. There are no molds or dies to produce, Dean said.

In the coming years, as rapid-prototyping methods evolve andmaterials come down in price, FutureFactories will be able to match thematerials and finishes to those achieved from conventional manufacture,Dean predicted.

„The costs and performance of rapid prototyping processes is certainto come down as manufacturers turn their attention from prototyping toproduction,” Dean said. „The range of materials is likely to increaseand multiple materials within the same build will become moreprevalent.”

For his part, Grenda has his doubts about the future affordabilityof the polymers, powers, and metal materials used in rapid prototypingprocesses.

„These days more and more materials are proprietary,” he said. „Theindustry is very much husbanding the materials because a large fractionof the profit, I'd guess about 40 percent, comes from the materialused.”

Fooling Around

Instead, it's the introduction of affordable 3-D printers that maysee more companies like FigurePrints and Shapeways as well asindividual entrepreneurs make their way to the marketplace, Grendasaid. For more than two years, Desktop Factory of Pasadena, Calif., anIdealab incubator, has continually pushed back its plans to introduce a$5,000 desktop 3-D printer. That printer is now scheduled to come tomarket early this year.

„People want to do these types of businesses, but they can't reallyfool around with them,” Grenda said. „For 5,000 bucks, you can affordto fool around and it won't be rapacious on materials or businesscosts.”

And it's the business costs, bottom line, and plans for overallgrowth that these new companies need to work on, as they lead the wayfor later businesses based on 3-D printing to enter the market.

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