3d printing

Pantheon Design alleviates supply chain uncertainty with factory-grade 3D printing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 22, 2022Posted in 3d printing, Battlefield 200, Disrupt, Hardware, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

In the midst of the pandemic, Pantheon Design, a maker of industrial 3D printers from Vancouver, BC, suddenly found itself getting orders from factories in the Midwest, the center of heavy industries. The reason? These manufacturers were having a hard time getting parts out of China as COVID-19 restrictions in the country squeezed global supply chains. One of Pantheon Design’s e-mobility customers waited 18 months before its injection molds, which are used for producing parts, arrived from China. If your electric vehicle or home appliance order is taking longer to arrive, chances are port closures and lockdowns in the factory of the world are messing up your supplier’s production timeline. For a long time, 3D printers were too expensive, slow, and short-lived to be economically viable for manufacturers, observes Bob Cao, co-founder and CEO of Pantheon Design, as he speaks to ZebethMedia as one of the Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200 companies. Many of the 3D printing startups that secure big VC checks are run by smart people who have never been in a real factory, which is hot and smelly, says the entrepreneur. “So their machines break down all the time.” “They make the product for prototyping, but they try to sell the idea for manufacturing,” he adds. Cao’s founder story follows a familiar pattern seen among engineers: five years ago, he and his co-founders bought a bunch of 3D printers to build products for industrial customers, but the third-party devices weren’t meeting their expectations, so they set out to build their own. Parts created by Pantheon’s 3d printer. The result is the HS3 3D printer, which is a sleek-looking cube measuring 300mm on each side and weighing 46.7 kilograms, featuring black anodized aluminum, which has been treated to achieve a durable finish. The device is able to print carbon fiber parts that are as sturdy as metal and 5-10 times faster than other options on the market thanks to the startup’s patented methods, according to Cao. Moreover, it’s able to do it at a competitive cost even in comparison to Chinese suppliers. The startup has sold 40 HS3 units — all assembled in-house in Vancouver with parts manufactured in Canada — since starting shipping the machine nine months ago. Each printer costs $15,000, but the bigger chunk of the company’s revenues comes from selling filaments. Also called the “ink” for 3D printers, filaments range from $50-150 a kilo, which brings a nice 90% profit margin, and most of the company’s customers spend about $500-800 a month on them. Pantheon Design has raised $800,000 in funding from a mix of investors in Canada and the U.S., including the Boston-based accelerator Techstars. The company is also buoyed by revenues it generated from its previous business of printing products and prototypes for clients, and two of its proudest moments include printing entire concept motorcycles for Honda and all the sci-fi props in the Netflix film The Adam Project.

Sugar Lab buys back its tech to take 3D-printed foods mainstream • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in 3d printing, 3d systems, food tech, Hardware, sugar labNo Comments

Original founder raises a sweet round at a $16M valuation, wants another stab at the market The 3D printing world can print in concrete, plastic, metal and pretty much everything else that starts off gooey and turns solid after a while. That includes a bunch of different types of foods, as Sugar Lab demonstrates. The company was originally acquired by 3D Systems in 2013, but co-founders Kyle von Hasseln and Meagan Bozeman decided to reverse course. Together, they wrestled the company loose again from its corporate overlords and they are having another go at growing it — and the Currant 3D printer the company sells — by themselves. The genesis for the company was von Hasseln’s sister’s birthday party, and an absence of regular cooking tools. He hacked an old 3D printer to print cupcake decorations, and he’s been on a mission to create unusual cakes and sweets ever since. The company describes what it does as a “digital bakery,” and much of the tech involved is there to make the printers food-safe — not typically a huge consideration for most 3D printing applications. “I recognized straight away that 3D printing with extruded food paste was too slow and rudimentary for wide adoption in the culinary world. That realization led me to immediately pivot to another 3D printing engine where thin layers of dehydrated food powder are bound layer after layer by water jetted from a printhead — which allows for precise, fast, full-color 3D printing,” says von Hasseln. “That invention, now called the CURRANT 3D Printer, solves the fundamental problem in the 3D-printed food space: mass adoption.” Weird and wonderful custom-printed sugar cubes for the sweet, sweet win. Image Credits: Currant 3D The new company acquired the 3D printing tech back in May, and now the race is on to raise more money and bring the products to market. The company claims its printers are able to 3D-print complex foods in full color, with the ability to scale the production for large batches of tasty treats. The pritners can print a number of ingredients, including dehydrated fruits, vegetables, spices and plant proteins. The result is that the company has what appears to be the only NSF-certified commercial-scale 3D food printing solution. “It may seem trivial, but our success is predicated on a simple design theory that every chef knows by heart — beautiful food is enticing, fun and engaging. And our 3D printer is best-in-class at creating beautiful food because we leverage all the promise of 3D design and 3D printing — color, precision and speed,” says von Hassln. “I am personally driven to make this new technology accessible to chefs everywhere. Chefs are artists at heart, and more than anyone they understand that well-designed food can create a completely new culinary experience.” The company raised $5 million, most recently at a $16 million post-money valuation. The money is being used to take back full ownership of the tech and company, and spin up operations. “After Kyle developed his culinary 3D printer, it was quickly acquired by 3D Systems, where he and I teamed up to create and run the Culinary Technology division that built the CURRANT 3D Printer from scratch. We left 3D Systems in 2019, backed by our investor group, to found our company and quickly became the largest purchaser of the 3D printing technology. When an opportunity to acquire the tech arose this year, we went back to our investor network, which was hugely supportive, and raised capital to wholly acquire the CURRANT 3D Printer platform,” explains Meagan Bozeman, COO at Currant 3D and Sugar Lab. “We’re extremely proud and grateful that the technology is back in the hands of its original inventors and champions. This has put us in complete control of our future; we’re 3D printing food faster than ever, expanding into a much larger commercial kitchen where we will manage a 20+ printer fleet for this next rapid growth chapter, and enabling others to build their own 3D production kitchens through the purchase of our printers and supplies.” The company says its ultimate goal is to take 3D-printed food from novelty to “indispensable ubiquity”. That doesn’t mean replacing how existing, well-loved foods are made, but to give chefs new powers to experiment and make new types of food. “Adoption of digital design and 3D printing is critically important for a more sustainable and secure food future,” claims von Hasseln. “If you can download a new 3D design into a regional 3D printing kitchen, and 3D-print onsite with local labor and ingredients, you can cut deeply into the inefficiencies of legacy food production that rely on trucking ingredients all over the country — both to and from factories.”