In 2003, I was working for Balfour (Actually Artcarved Balfour - a.k.a. Commemorative Brands and now American Achievement Corporation). The company purchased a brand new machine. A 3D Printer from Solid-scape.com. Its called a Rapid Prototyping machine but in reality its much cooler to call it a 3D printer. I was amazed at its ability to print in 3D and the resolution was incredible!
Fast forward a couple of years and I had left Balfour but an idea was brewing in my head. I was watching my middle son play a video game called Midnight club. He spent hours in the "Garage" customizing his cars. Mind you he drove them too but he spent the majority of his time playing with the look of his custom ride.
Being an engineer, with extensive experience in CAD software (Computer Aided Design) it didn't take me long to realize that combining 3D printing with video game-like technology and pushing it through the internet would open up an infinite possibility to customize products.
By the end of 2005 I had a dozen NDA's signed by various "players" and was working on a patent called Made-To-Order Direct Digital Manufacturing. The idea was to allow kids to customize class rings online, let them see the ring in near real time and produce exactly what they designed.
The idea quickly evolved to be called Made To Order Digital Manufacturing Enterprise. Why the name change? I realized in 2005 that this technology was applicable to make just about anything and even if the tech took years to develop, it would be within my lifetime.
By mid 2006 I had a working Demo online of a class ring in 3D but alas no controls to manipulate it. I spent a lot of time learning about configurators but as an engineer, I realized that the average consumer had no business designing most items. How could they? They couldn't understand the stress in a mechanical part. But they could embellish products so long as they did not violate the design intent.
By 2007 version 2 of the website was live and had actually grown to be a working demo with heightfield mapping software to create 3D terrain (topology) on a part using an image. I tried to raise Venture Capital and tried to the Austin Technology Incubator with no success. That did not crush my hopes. I turned to the SBIR program and looked for a federally-backed financial backer. That also failed so I turned to bootstrapping. So far I have managed to continue to prosecute patents and even notified Shapeways of the existence of our patents Pending. We hope to have our patents awarded by 2011.
What's the holdup? There isn't really a major hurdle to using Rapid Prototyping or 3D printing to make products except for the printers themselves. They are slow and their build envelopes are relatively small. This means that making anything of any significant size is very difficult and cost prohibitive. So what s left?
What's left is anything smaller than a breadbox! That is a huge market, a market which I am not ready to divulge but I will say that in 2005 when I was writing my patents, there was absolutely NOTHING online like this. By the end of 2008, a company called Shapeways had emerged in the Netherlands, funded by Phillips Lifestyle Incubator. That company was called Shapeways. They had beat me to the punch. Not with demos or patents but wth a crude but effective website offering a few custom products. Its not perfect but they are generating revenue wile spending time learning more and more about the market. An invaluable experience for sure. Time will tell what will ultimately happen. With the launch of Kraftwurx, maybe we'll see more growth in the 3D printing industry.
Please visit www.digitalrealitycorp.com to read more.
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