The Beast is Out of the Cage – Courtesy of Agile Manufacturing

The iPro 9000 XL is a beast of a 3D printer – with a build platform clocking in at a whopping 59” x 30” x 22”, you will not find a larger production 3D printer in the Americas, and it’s hard to find a larger printer than it anywhere. Up until now, getting parts built on one of these machines was pretty tough to do – they were all either in the hands of companies that used them internally, or still in the hands of 3D Systems – until now, that is.

Agile Manufacturing, already one of the largest independent 3D printing services, and a leading provider of 3D Printing & Rapid Manufacturing solutions, has just obtained one of these behemoths and plans on using it to produce extra-large parts without the need to build in sections and assemble. While building in parts and assembling can work very well, especially when done by the expert technicians at a big service bureau like Agile, there’s nothing quite like watching a 6-foot-long bumper come off a machine in one piece, to say nothing of the accuracy and time savings that it offers.

The iPro 9000 XL quickly and economically builds ABS plastic-like parts with exceptional accuracy, surface smoothness and feature resolution, with up to 66” on the diagonal. Now instead of investing over a million dollars to bring this capability in-house, companies can outsource their large parts to Agile Manufacturing.

“With the increasing demand for production parts as well as very large prototypes, the addition of the 9000XL to our fleet of production systems will help Agile offer the largest part 3D Printing solutions and shortest lead-times, a few days, to our clients,” stated Richard Smeenk, Agile’s President.

The fact that enough demand is being produced for a machine like this to be needed and economical is great news for the 3D printing industry – it means that more and more businesses, many of whom once relied on traditional manufacturing, are seeing the benefits that 3D printing can create. Events like this are evidence of the shift in manufacturing, and huge for the businesses like Agile who are leading the charge at changing the way products are produced.

“As 3D printed prototypes and production models become more common over a larger range of industries, it’s not surprising we’re seeing more requests come in for extra-large and extra-long parts,” says Nathan Smeenk, Agile’s VP Operations. “With this machine, we add a huge amount to our capacity, as well as add the ability to build those extra-long parts, saving ourselves finishing time and cost, and saving money and accelerating delivery for our customers.”

Agile Manufacturing Inc. provides 3D Printed parts, 3D Printers and 3D Printer materials. Agile is the largest 3D Printing Service Bureau in Canada with 18 printers ranging from Stereolithography (SLA), to Laser Sintering (SLS), MultiJet Printing (MJP), ColourJet Printing (CJP), Direct Metal Printing (DMP) and Filament Deposition. With over 150,000 hours of annual 3D Printing capacity (or 4.2 billion cubic inches per year) Agile is well positioned to meet your 3D Printing needs. Agile sells New and Used Professional & Production 3D Printers across all technologies and stock all materials in-house for immediate delivery. Agile has been operating in the Greater Toronto Area for 12 years and serves customers across Canada and the USA, with select customers on 6 continents. Agile Manufacturing’s team of 21 Additive Manufacturing (AM) and 3D Printing (3DP) experts is led by Richard Smeenk, a 3D Printing veteran since 1996.