When one of the world's largest conglomerates purchases two of the leading metal 3D printing companies in the industry, you know that additive manufacturing (AM) is on the up and up. This is true not just for GE, but for many of the major players in the 3D printing space.
Proto Labs, which officially joined the 3D printing industry in 2014 with its acquisition of FineLine Prototyping, is also expanding its 3D printing efforts with the launch of a new 77,000 square foot AM facility in Cary, N.C.
Rob Connelly, vice president of Additive Technologies at Proto Labs, spoke to ENGINEERING.com about what will go into this new facility, as well as what it means for Proto Labs and the 3D printing industry overall.
A Facility with Room to Grow
Prior to the new site, Proto Labs housed its 3D printing technologies in two separate centers measuring approximately 10,000 square feet each. One location was dedicated to stereolithography (SLA) and the other to laser sintering—both direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) for metal and selective laser sintering (SLS) for plastics. Connelly explained that the new facility, almost four times the size of the two previous 3D printing centers combined, was the result of high demand on the part of Proto Labs customers.
Now, the company has brought all of its systems, totaling over 70 industrial 3D printers, into one location with plenty of room to spare. “We built it up with offices in portion and the labs in a portion for all the 3D printing parts and brought all three of our technologies under one roof,” Connelly explained. “The rest of it is for growth. One thing that we have certainly found in the past couple of years is that we’re really taking off with this. Our growth has been rather fast, and we wanted to make sure that we had plenty of room to grow in here for 3–5 years before we had to find yet another building. We have lots of room to move around.”
While the site currently contains Proto Labs SLA, SLS and DMLS machines, Proto Labs is one of HP's first customers, so the facility will also house the company’s Multi Jet Fusion technology. This may be a big vote of confidence for the technology, as Connelly explained that Proto Labs is highly selective when it comes to purchasing machines.
Connelly said, “Our objective is to evaluate all of these that come out in one way or another, whether it's just a cursory check, a visit to the headquarters to see the technology and learn more about it, or to actually bring one in house. The ones that make sense that actually accomplish something new to our customers, we’ll implement those. We don’t plan to just bring in every new technology, every stray dog and cat out there, but just the ones that really make sense to our customers.”
Software Automation
One characteristic of Proto Labs' manufacturing services is the automated software used to drive the company’s overall workflow. According to Connelly, Proto Labs relies on a “digital thread” that connects every aspect of the business, from quote generation to printing the shipping labels and sending orders out the door.
There is human intervention when it comes to managing the printers and prepping parts for fabrication, but Connelly pointed out, “The automation allows us to streamline the myriad of steps in data handling and order processing that have to take place behind the scenes with any technology such that it can happen quickly, cost-effectively and without errors.”
To increase the efficiency of the order placement and delivery process, Proto Labs has software in place that performs a number of tasks essential to running such a large print operation. Some of the functions that software executes include:
- Automatically checking for geometric issues associated with a 3D printable file
- Setting up the quantity and part numbers of an order
- Triggering the workflow for machine operators
- Auditing the files that go to the machines
- Running the machines themselves
This digital thread is wound through a single, common software system in a way that Connelly suggests is quick and cost-effective.
“We found from the start that there are a hundred plus ways for you to have an error creep into these processes from the time the customer submits their geometry to when we ship parts out the door,” Connelly said. “We made a concerted effort to trap just as many of those as possible, automate the steps around them in software and keep human error out of it to the extent possible.”
The Past and Future of 3D Printing Services
As the company's name suggests, Proto Labs is big on prototyping, as well as short run manufacturing. Before 2014, this meant computer numerical controlled (CNC) machining and injection molding; however, after the purchase of Connelly's 3D printing business, FineLine Prototyping, in 2014, the company was able to expand its rapid fabrication services even further. As a result, Connelly said, the business was able to grow to meet demand.
“It has certainly given us the wherewithal to invest to the level necessary to keep up with the demand put on us for growth by our customer base,” Connelly explained. “We were growing on the order of 25 to 30 percent or so prior to the acquisition and that was largely limited by the rate that we could generate cash in house. With Proto Labs being involved, we can afford to capitalize at a higher rate and our growth has been a lot higher as a result.”
Connelly added, “It's also allowed us a more professional approach to project planning and software and process evolution that will get us to a better state in five years than we would have been in with our ad hoc approach to project management prior. It’s a more a professional way to get to where we need to be to compete.”
At Proto Labs, 3D printing is still mostly used for prototyping purposes, but Connelly said that demand for end use manufacturing applications is increasing and at a rate that is faster than pure prototyping. In the future, more and more aspects of the business will be digitized, further increasing the efficiency in the order placement process. Connelly also anticipates that the services currently spread across Proto Labs, such as CNC machining and injection molding, will continue to blend further so that multiple divisions will lend their services to a single order.
All of this will be additionally fueled by new momentum in the 3D printing industry overall, signaled by GE’s acquisition of Arcam and SLM Solutions. Connelly was excited about the acquisitions, saying that they represent another boost for the 3D printing industry.
“GE gave the additive manufacturing industry a very strong vote of validation when they acquired Morris Technologies and really started publicizing what they do with it back in 2013 or so,” Connelly said. “I see that happening again perhaps supercharged with this latest announcement. It would seem to me that what they’re doing here is reaching the production stage of their R&D work and now they’re ready to make all of these parts that they've been talking about for all of these years and now they have the capacity to do so.”
In turn, other manufacturers will recognize that it will be necessary to incorporate 3D printing into their operations where necessary. And, as other companies bring the technology into their supply chains, Proto Labs will likely start filling up the rest of its new facility sooner rather than later.