3D Systems announced it will increase its presence in Denver, Colorado to support its fast-growing healthcare solutions business, and expand industrial application development capabilities for its Application Innovation Group (AIG). This activity is a continuation of the investment phase of the company’s plan to focus on its strategic purpose as the leaders in enabling additive manufacturing solutions for applications in growing markets that demand high-reliability products.
Patient-specific Solutions Transform How Healthcare is Delivered
For more than a decade, 3D Systems has delivered a portfolio of industry-leading healthcare solutions, including patient-specific surgical instruments and implants manufactured at its FDA-registered and ISO 13485-certified location in Denver. The company has supported customers of all sizes, ranging from industry leaders to innovative startups, in developing a diverse portfolio of groundbreaking precision healthcare applications and new medical technology. 3D Systems has manufactured more than two million medical device implants, collaborated with surgeons to plan and guide more than 140,000 patient-specific procedures, and supported 100+ CE-marked and FDA-cleared products. Through this next phase of investment, the company will be able to accelerate time-to-market, expand its offerings, and better support the needs of its rapidly growing customer base. This positions 3D Systems to continue its strong growth trajectory for patient-specific craniomaxillofacial applications through expanded production capacity and ongoing product innovations. It will also enable the company to aggressively increase its participation in the larger patient-specific orthopedics market through the development and deployment of new joint replacement solutions.
Accelerating Innovation for Industrial Applications
The services provided by 3D Systems’ Application Innovation Group are critical to accelerating the journey from proof-of-concept for new customer applications to full-scale workflow definition and initial production. This team employs their experience and expertise to understand the customer’s need and jointly innovate potential application solutions that are subsequently developed into full manufacturing workflows. From there, the AIG experts validate - and where necessary - support obtaining certification and regulatory approvals which are critical to accelerating time to product launch in highly regulated markets. With this complete, the parts are then ready for production either at a 3D Systems manufacturing facility or the customer’s site. Additionally, through this infrastructure investment, the company will add expertise and the most advanced polymer and metal additive manufacturing technologies to address new, more complex industrial applications such as those for aerospace.
“The combination of maturing industrial-scale metal and polymer printing technology and advanced material solutions, with a customer base that increasingly seeks the performance, flexibility and cost benefits of large-scale additive manufacturing, is driving significantly increased demand for our products and services,” said Dr. Jeffrey Graves, president and CEO, 3D Systems. “Our Application Innovation Group has demonstrated tremendous benefits for enabling the adoption of complex applications for customers across our healthcare and industrial businesses. We pursue a consultative approach with our customers that starts with understanding their unique application performance and cost needs and develop a custom solution to address that need. It’s about bringing to life a customer’s understanding of what is possible with additive manufacturing, then producing the parts, scaling the initial production volumes, demonstrating the economics, and ultimately enabling them to continue high-volume production in the future. From joint application development to qualifying and validating parts and processes, manufacturing, and then installing a complete solution at the customer site – we partner with customers to solve their most difficult design and production challenges and empower them to maintain that momentum. This is the heart of our growth engine for the future.”
This expansion will increase 3D Systems’ Denver, Colorado footprint by over 50% and the company anticipates it will be completed in the second quarter of 2022. In addition to providing critical working and collaboration space for the growing teams, the expansion will enable the addition of multiple 3D printers – including forthcoming products - and large scale post-processing equipment that will automate key aspects of the production workflow for parts as large as those of the DMP Factory 500 (i.e., 500mm3). This will enable the company to both develop and demonstrate the technical and economic viability of a greater range of additive solutions for both healthcare and industrial market segments.
