Ultimaker is one of the most recognisable names in the desktop 3D printing space. The product of a ProtoSpace FabLab project founded in the Netherlands in 2011, the company arrived right when the 3D printing bubble was about to reach peak hype. Whereas the inevitable consumer ‘pop’ signalled the end of the road for some, Ultimaker now has a staff of over 200 people and a network of sales and distribution in over 50 countries.
Given the company’s international acclaim, it’s hard to believe that its products were only officially launched in North America in 2014 with offices now in New York, San Francisco and most recently, Boston. Somewhat of a magnet for 3D printing (Formlabs, Desktop Metal and Rize can be loosely considered neighbours), the new Boston space is where I meet with John Kawola, President of Ultimaker North America.
Inside there are a cluster of machines and samples alongside a museum-style display of two original wooden laser-cut Ultimakers demonstrating the evolution of the hardware across the last six years. John has been in the industry since 1997, having started out with Z Corporation in the golden age of closed loop 3D printing before becoming president and CEO. In 2012 he decided a change of direction was needed and went on to become CEO of robotics company, Harvest Automation, joining two other Boston companies Voxel8 and LabMinds, along the way. By 2016, he decided to make his return to 3D printing at a time when the industry was picking up the pieces from the Trough of Disillusionment and building its way through Slope of Enlightenment.
Ultimaker NA Pres John Kawola
John Kawola joined Ultimaker as North American President in April 2016.
“In the last five years, you could make an argument that the desktop 3D printing space, from a technology evolution point of view, has moved pretty quickly, part of it is because of open source,” John told TCT Magazine. “Between the consumer hype, the financial run up and then the bubble, it brought people into the industry.”
Much has happened in that time. There are no longer just a handful of major players keeping IPs close to their chests, instead, collaboration is king. Desktop at-home dreams have come and gone, and marquee names like GE and HP have entered making phenomenal investments and chasing production. But there is life in the desktop yet.
On to the Iron Age
The desktop shift was alluded to during the launch of the mini Ultimaker 2 Go and Ultimaker 2 Extended machines back at CES 2015, when the company’s Co-founder and CTO, Siert Wijnia, told TCT he believed we were moving “out of the stone age of 3D printing into the Iron Age”. Hyperbolic? Maybe, but Siert explained that while back then users were printing just “things”, in the next few years this would evolve to products with genuine functionality and purpose. Judging by Ultimaker’s recent collaborations with the likes of Volkswagen and Jabil, that prediction was dead on and the professional market now accounts for more than 50% of its business.
“Having done this for almost 20 years, I haven’t actually heard of an idea yet that I haven’t heard before in terms of using 3D printing for a jig or fixture, medical visualisation or museums etc,” John commented. “Those ideas have existed for the last 15-20 years but the number of people who would actually implement them was limited because of price, ease of use and availability of materials. What desktop 3D printing has done, and what other innovations out there are trying to do, is drive the rate of adoption even deeper. For a lot of these areas, such as more tooling examples, medical visualisation, real production, the common denominator there is cost.”
Detailed Boston 3D print from Ultimaker.
Cost and improved functionality are making the current generation of desktop machines in the $2,000 - $3,000 price bracket particularly attractive. Big companies are now looking at the desktop as a serious contender for both prototyping and end-use parts. The Jabil story in particular, is an interesting one. At this year’s Additive Manufacturing Users Group Conference, the manufacturing services company spoke of how they set aside a large chunk of money to go invest in new equipment. They looked at some big industrial machines but being incredibly cost conscious, decided it wasn’t the best bet. Jabil began talking to Ultimaker two years ago, did the math and realised desktop could be the way to go if the print quality could measure up. They now have a wall of Ultimaker machines installed at their Florida facility printing prototypes and jigs and fixtures to be used on the production line.
“I think it sort of opened their eyes,” John explained. “We still deal with that bias a little bit where the professional, the hardcore additive manufacturing people, may look at desktop 3D printing and think that it’s not for them but those barriers are starting to come down.”
Ultimaker is biting back at those assumptions with its latest updates including a new version of its Cura slicing software and industrial-grade material capabilities. A new Polypropylene fi lament and printing profiles for a wider range of engineering materials mean that users are able to print functional prototypes closer to end-use parts. With the Ultimaker 3 and 3 Extended, launched last year, its dual printing feature enables engineers to print in two materials including its PVA water-soluble support filament.
PVA water-soluble support filament before and after.
Quality vs. Quantity
An increasing number of companies are opting for this multiple desktop printer approach rather than a single industrial machine. Whilst users are getting more bang for their buck by simply having access to more than one system, Ultimaker has been researching how it’s also changed behaviours in these professional spaces where access to more machines has increased machine use.
“The level of awareness and penetration of a 3D printer into those professional organisations is relatively high at this point, 50% or more,” John explains. “That wasn’t true ten years ago but it’s certainly true now. But then we would argue, if that’s true, the number of parts they’re actually making is still not that great. Even though they might have an industrial machine, how many parts are getting made every week? We think that’s still relatively low. We’re starting to see more and more examples where people would rather have 10 or 20 of these [desktop machines] spread around the building or centralised but it’s about access.”
One of the features driving this surge in engagement is connectivity. The previous generation of Ultimaker machines required users to submit designs via USB. Now that this latest family of machines is connected, it means that organisations can grant access to a number of printers distributed across an office or factory floor and as a result, more parts, particularly prototypes, are getting made.
“We still believe there is a huge opportunity in prototyping, everyone is drifting off into manufacturing but we think there is still a huge opportunity in prototyping, it is the killer app, it always has been for 3D printing,” John commented.
Ultimaker 3
Ultimaker 3
This focus on prototyping and an industrial demographic doesn’t mean that Ultimaker has neglected another of its key markets, education. The sector still counts for more than 30% of its business in the U.S. alone and it continues to grow its education Pioneer programme which was launched last year inviting educators to access and contribute 3D printing projects that can be carried out in the classroom. But education has always been a clear market winner for 3D printing. What wasn’t clear was the impact desktop technologies would eventually have in industry, particularly from, and thanks to, an open source perspective.
“You could make an argument that things like bubbles, while they happen and they pop or are painful, they do move things forward," John reflects. "The open nature of what Ultimaker and a few desktop players are doing has brought a whole bunch of people in. We’ve had big companies go to the big plastics companies of the world, who they buy hundreds of tonnes of resin to manufacture their products and they’re saying to those same chemical companies, ‘we have a bunch of 3D printers in our organisation, why don’t we make the fi lament out of exactly the same resin?’. That’s an intriguing idea. None of the small fi lament companies can do that but BASF can do that. There are lots of things like that happening that could have never been done, certainly in the early years but can be driven by big those big customers now.”
Visit Ultimaker at formnext powered by tct at Frankfurt Messe, Hall 3.1 stand C20 on 14-17th November.
