Inside the Manhattan headquarters of 3D printing service Shapeways, engineers plug away at rows of workstations, the crisp clackety-clack of a table tennis match is underway in the break room, and CEO Peter Weijmarshausen sees a revolution building across his industry.
“3D printing can completely disrupt the way we think about manufacturing,” he says. “We have built a platform that people are using to bring their products to market in a much quicker, lower-barrier way than it used to be.”
For anyone catching up on this space, 3D printing is a method of producing objects by using a machine that lays down layers of a liquid material—typically plastics—that can harden quickly, making digital 3D models into real-world versions quickly and relatively cheaply.
It’s been used for years in manufacturing, but advances in the technology are making the machines cheaper. They can be used to create trinkets and toys, or more serious items such as bone implants or transparent braces for teeth. The technology is also used to create hearing aids. (Although, Weijmarshausen says, Shapeways has not really pursued the medical end of the market.)
Though there still limits to what can be created with the medium, the ability to custom order items through 3D printing, he says, cuts down the need to sell the high volumes typically necessary for mass production to make financial sense.
The 3D printing movement wants very badly to spread into more aspects of life, from personal desktop machines available now from MakerBot Industries in Brooklyn and units due for wide release in October from Formlabs, to professional-grade printers from 3D Systems and Stratasys for creating prototypes.
And while Shapeways can also produce prototypes, Weijmarshausen says, that is not the company’s main focus.
Instead, he says, enabling people to get products they want, from jewelry to décor and even board game pieces, is at the heart of Shapeways. The technology has also spread to the fashion world to create shoes and even an evening gown from 3D printed pieces. The company’s online market lets designers post images of their creations that customers can order to be printed by Shapeways and shipped.
“The time to market of a product can go from months and maybe years to days or weeks,” Weijmarshausen says. The cost to bring products to market also plunges through 3D printing, he says, giving independent designers and small companies a chance to sell their own products.
Weijmarshausen compares this 3D printing-driven transformation of manufacturing, which is still in its early stages, to the software space. Publishers previously only released software on discs (and if you look back far enough, floppy disks). Thanks to the Internet, software can be accessed and downloaded immediately.
“With the Internet, platforms such as ours will have the ability to do the same for physical products,” he says.
The lower barriers to entry 3D printing offers, he says, could also lead to more startups creating ideas around physical products and not just apps, software, and websites. A benefit of 3D printing, Weijmarshausen says, is the ability for designers to create limited run and customizable products. A napkin ring made through Shapeways might include text personalized by each consumer, yet have the same dimensions and shape.
Shapeways, founded in 2007, developed at an incubator in the Netherlands funded by Philips Electronics. The operations team remains overseas but Weijmarshausen says company is building its product, marketing, and engineering staff in New York.
“We’re almost 40 people here,” he says, and the company may need more space as
