BUFFALO, NY - The design and printing aspects of additive manufacturing usually occupy the headlines of news stories, but there's another element to 3D printing that has been overlooked to by entire industry,
The post processing of printed parts.
A Buffalo-based startup is the only company in the world right now creating the tools and workflow to truly finish a 3D printed part.
“We’re a homegrown company with homegrown responsibilities, roots and workforce,” said Post Process founder Daniel Hutchinson.
Here’s the problem with 3D printed parts, many require some sort of support to maintain its structure during printing, but the removing those supports can be tedious and make it cumbersome for manufacturers to print large volumes of parts.
This bottleneck in the post processing is one of the main reasons why manufacturers haven't plugged in to 3D printing to produce large-scale parts for the consumer market.
It’s a problem US Navy Veteran and Post Process founder Daniel Hutchinson identified and solved. At a trade show, he noticed all the vendors were focused on the printing, but no one was talking about finishing of the products.
Hutchinson, a former Northrop Grumman engineer, started building developing a solution to process parts in his Lancaster garage.
“There was a lot of activity, everyone wanted to see what I was doing. “
He developed a software and hardware elements that Post Process sells to manufacturers. These units range in size, depending on the product that needs processing. The machines can finish individual parts or hundreds at a time.
That attracted attention from big name companies from the defense and automotive industries, who are working to implement reliable additive manufacturing into their workflow.
Post Process joined the START-UP NY in 2015 and moved into a space at the Olmsted Center. At the same time, the company attracted a big name to lead as CEO.
“I came from Silicon Valley to help our founder expand the company," said CEO Jeff Mize.
Mize was the EVP of Sales at Navteq, a company that was bought by Nokia for $8.1B in 2008. He was attracted to Post Process by Hutchinson’s attention to the processing side.
“The need to have an intelligent and automated solution in that third step of printing is becoming greater and greater," Mize said.
How the company finishes parts varies. One method involves detergents and suspended media. When parts are submerged and tumbled around, they emerge finished. Another method involves abrasive polyurethane pebbles that are so gentle, you can place your business card inside without it being torn up.
“Over 60% need some sort of surface finishing," said Mize, "so there’s a big misconception that once the part is printed that it’s finished, when in fact it’s not.”
3D printing is projected to be a $20B industry by 2020. The processing and finishing side of that could be worth $2B and Post Process in Buffalo is the only one company focusing on that aspect of the 3D printing market.
“We’re highly confident we can build a company worth $80-$100m dollars by 2020," Mize said.