Over the past few months I have been intrigued by the rising popularity of 3D printing. This young technology is getting a lot of mentions in the media and on the web. In my everyday life its even making an appearance, a machine recently showed up in my office and has excited a lot of people. It has been a few years since I was up close and personal with printing so this was a great new development for me personally. Since I am a bit out of date I reached out to a few contacts (one of whom provided me with some great sample prints that still sit on my desk) who had helped me out in the past. Julie Reece, who appeared previously on this blog after we met on the floor at Solidworks World in 2010, told me about 7 year old printing company Mcor that has been growing nicely.
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| The results of 3D printing in paper |
Mcor is using an amazing material to differentiate themselves. Instead of plastic or tool steel Mcor is using paper. That’s right, good old fashion paper. Julie put me in touch with Mcor Co-Founder and CEO Conor McCormack and we had a chance to chat about the amazing new developments Mcor is working on as well as the state of the industry. What follows is our conversation:
3DEngr:: When were you first exposed to 3d printing, and how have things developed since then?
Conor: The very first time I saw it was on a show here in the UK. The show is called “Tomorrow’s world”, it showed all this futuristic stuff, maybe 20 years ago. It had the old school SLA. I was just in my engineering degree and I thought, that’s really impressive.
In my own career, I was working with Airbus on the a380 and I was exposed to a lot of CAD packages and 3d printing. I was also doing work at Trinity college and I realized only one of the students was getting the chance to print a model at the end of the year, just one, and that’s just a shame. That was the seed of the idea that started with “Could we make a super low cost machine that is also very eco friendly for everyone to use”. From 03-05 we worked on it and we oth gave up our jobs and it just seemed like a natural thing to do to go into business with my brother if we could make a machine that everyone could use.
3DEngr:I know, being in consumer products, I’m excited for the day everyone has one, but it’s weird to think that someday what my business is based on could be made in the home.
Conor: Just because it’s easier to use the tool, and just because you give someone a word processor they are not going to turn into Shakespeare. But it’s a technical thing, not just being able to draw, but to design.
3DEngr:That’s true it still takes skill but It’s cool to see things coming along and developing…
Conor: It has come a long way, people used to say, even 3 years ago, “do I need 3d glasses to see the parts?” It’s just changed a lot. Which is needed for innovation to jump the chasm into the mainstream.
It is one thing to talk about innovation jumping into the mainstream, but making the leap means truly changing a lot about to cater to new demands for 3D Printing. The consumer market is very different from the industrial and design market. I asked Conor about the technology MCor has in their existing line of printers and how it compares to the new machine they will be releasing later this year. One of the primary benefits of the upcoming Mcor Iris is the ability to print in color. He explained why.
Conor: We can just put different color paper feed into the printer and get that color (On the Mcor Matrix).. But we basically combined a 3d printer and an inkjet printer (to get the new Iris)and we get very high color fidelity. One of the advantages over other machines is that we have very high color fidelity. There are a few technical parts in it, we had to make our own Mcor ink that makes it print correctly. It’s a big advantage to take an image of a family friend, landscape or toy and really make a photo realistic model. Especially breaking into the consumer segment. They want something life like. You put a bit of color on a white part, and the additional resolution you get just really makes it pop. Some of the white parts you see them and they look like you can throw them away.
We’re launching that machine at the end of November at Euro Mold. So we’ll have some high quality parts… in Frankfurt.
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| Mcor’s Iris 3D printed landscape |
Euro Mold is in Frankfurt Germany from Nov 27-30, 2012.
Outside of the engineering and product department, sales and distribution are critical to growth. Mcor has been expanding with offices in the US (San Jose and Atlanta), Ireland and now distribution in China and Southeast Asia. There are two major 3D printing companies, Stratasys and 3D Systems, who are darlings of the US Stock market thanks to their accepted growth potential (3D Systems P/E ratio is 63 while Stratasys P/Eis around 66) I asked Conor about the potential for his organization.
3DEngr: Where do you see the biggest growth for the technology and for Mcor?
Conor: We wouldn’t be competitors with the two big yet, but we think we could be. There are some manufacturing challenges but we’re there now and we’re signing up channels and in the process of expanding. We’re using the traditional process of signing up distributors who can install and maintain the machine and it enables us to get out there quickly. we have a couple more announcements coming quickly.
For more of the conversation with Conor see Part 2, which talks about the new pricing model for Mcor’s that again is helping them offer something unique to their customers.