I found it refreshing, then, to talk this past Thursday at iMakr‘s Desktop 3D Printing Show in London, with Shon Anderson, CEO of South Dakota-based B9Creations. The difference, he told me, is that his company focuses on telling and delivering on what it can definitely do.
“The approach isn’t sexy,” Anderson explained, but it is simple: “We promise what we can deliver.”
By focusing on the areas that can best benefit from the technology they’ve developed–primarily jewelry and dentistry–the B9Creator 3D printer can be used to its best potential. The focus here is laser-sharp: immediate return on investment. What can this technology do for a customer now? While a lot of the promise of 3D printing that we see so often is in projections, the only projection that B9Creations uses is the projector that cures the resin in the B9Creator. Clearly they’ve been doing something right here, as the 3D printer was voted one of 3D Hubs’ Best Resin Printers in their 2016 Printing Guide.
“After the fifth Yoda head, the thrill of 3D printing wears off,” Anderson noted.
By appealing directly to the industries they serve, rather than focusing on the fact that they offer a 3D printer, the focus lies with the customers; I was lucky, it turns out, to run into B9Creations at a 3D printing show. I’d have had better luck running into them at a tradeshow based on jewelry or dental industry needs.
“People don’t care about resolution,” Anderson said, “they care about what that resolution will do for them.”
The B9Creator itself is a pretty neat machine. It’s nice to look at, for one, and for another it’s one of the only wall-mountable 3D printers on the market. For a desktop machine, you sure can save on desk space by not even using any. In developing their 3D printer, the B9Creations team also worked to ensure that they did everything right. Andrew Rush, now the president of Made In Space, was B9Creation’s patent attorney. The key pieces in the printer that make it stand apart from the pack have been patented, forestalling some of the IP issues that so often plague the 3D printing space. And, with the tie to MIS, it looks like we’ll be seeing a B9Creator on-board the ISS, which is looking at high-resolution DLP 3D printing for the next-next gen of additive manufacturing in space.