We’ve got some business news for you in this weekend edition of 3D Printing News Briefs! CADENAS and BCN3D are both reporting good news from 2020, and ExOne has just joined the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association. Finally, a former US.. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense has joined the advisory board of 6K.
CADENAS: Record Number of CAD Model Downloads in 2020
From the beginning of January to the end of December in 2020, CADENAS is reporting a record number of CAD model downloads from manufacturers based on its eCATALOGsolutions technology: over 666 million, in fact. Architects, engineers, and planners from around the world downloaded 666,194,220 CAD and BIM models of component manufacturers last year, compared to only a little more than 400 million downloads in 2019. This shows that this kind of growth is continuing to speed up as the demand grows for digitization of product data and digital twins.
“We have seen a sensational increase in CAD download numbers in recent years,” said Jürgen Heimbach, CEO of CADENAS GmbH. “The reason for this is also our visual search engine for manufacturer components 3DfindIT.com, which, in contrast to conventional search engines, is focused on the technical area and effectively supports engineers, architects as well as planners in finding the right component.”
BCN3D Year in Review: Growth in 2020
Barcelona-based 3D printing solutions provider BCN3D Technologies also had a pretty good 2020, in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic: the company is reporting that it closed out the year with record growth. It doubled its number of employees with 70 new hires, bringing the total to 150, and relocated them to a new facility as well. BCN3D also appointed 11 sales partners in just Q4, with new distributors now in Taiwan and Hong Kong, China, India, the UK and Ireland, Israel, Russia, Italy and Malta, the Benelux region, the Philippines, Namibia, and Tunisia. Finally, in addition to raising €2.8 million in funding through an investment led by industrial group Mondragon and CDTI (the Spanish National Innovation Agency), BCN3D also introduced the next generation of its Epsilon and Sigma 3D printers.
“2020 was an exciting year for BCN3D as we continued to capitalize on our market opportunities and successfully executed our aggressive growth objectives,” stated BCN3D CEO Xavier Martínez Faneca. “I look forward to our business growth in the additive manufacturing market continuing to accelerate in 2021.”
ExOne Joins the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association
Launched in 2019, the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA) is a non-commercial, unaffiliated organization that promotes the environmental benefits of AM over more traditional manufacturing methods. Now, binder jetting leader ExOne announced that it has joined the AMGTA as a founding member. The AMGTA is open to any additive manufacturer or industry stakeholder that meets certain criteria relating to the sustainability of their production or processes, and independent research is just one way it promotes the technology’s environmental and sustainability positives. This fall, the organization published its first commissioned university research project, by Dr. Jeremy Faludi from Delft University of Technology and Corrie Van Sice from Dartmouth College, about the sustainability of metal AM; in this regard, ExOne says that its binder jet 3D printing technology saves energy by consolidating parts, reduces material waste to less than 5%, and can fabricate much more lightweight end-use products, which can make planes, cars, and military equipment much more efficient, and thus sustainable.
“While our team at ExOne is confident about the broad sustainability benefits of our binder jetting technology, our customers are eager to have independent data that demonstrates these benefits through the whole end-to-end life cycle. We are delighted to support AMGTA’s important work in this area,” said John Hartner, ExOne’s CEO, who will now also serve on the Board of Directors for the AMGTA.
6K Advisory Board Welcomes New Advisory Board Member
6K, which develops microwave plasma technology for making advanced materials, welcomed new team members and a new advisory board member last month. Now, the company has announced that former senior Department of Defense official under then Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Dr. Joe Felter, has joined its advisory board. A former US Army Special Forces and Foreign Area Officer who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times, Dr. Felter is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia. He also founded Silicon Valley technology incubator BMNT, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a William J. Perry Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and co-creator of “Hacking for Defense” a defense innovation-focused curriculum he helped develop that is now sponsored by the DoD and taught at over 50 U.S. universities. Dr. Felter will help guide the company’s strategy to work with the DoD, and other federal agencies, to innovate and deploy products made with advanced materials to support the country’s national interest.
“Strategic materials are becoming increasingly pivotal to the national interests of the United States, and 6K continues to prove its unique capability to address these needs, with examples like its recent Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) contract to recover and upcycle materials for defense applications from domestic sources of supply. The recent pandemic has shown the need to strengthen control of supply chains and create domestic sourcing. 6K can do this across numerous important areas including batteries for energy independence and critical alloys for aircraft and weapons platforms,” Dr. Felter said. “I am extremely enthusiastic to join 6K’s advisory board and help the company to advance its efforts both in Washington and with strategic suppliers.”
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