Boston Micro Fabrication is expanding to two new facilities in Massachusetts, U.S. and Shenzhen, China. The company also reported that it has acquired an additional 100 customers in 2021, taking its total to 200. The Massachusetts facility is in Maynard and will be the firm’s headquarters. In Shenzhen, the company will have a facility that includes over 40 of its 3D printers.
“Micro 3D printing is beginning to catch fire around the world. For years, this portion of the market was under-served by existing additive manufacturing platforms as the resolution and accuracy needed for micro parts was not possible. Our microArch platform finally brings 3D printing and miniaturization to these industries that were once left out completely – and our expanded presence helps us support these use cases no matter where our customers are located,” John Kawola, CEO of BMF, said.
These customers use projection micro stereolithography (PµSL) to make parts usually for research, but also in fields such as medical device, microfluidics and electronics production. One of their customers is Dutch company Sonion NL. Sally van der Most, their Development Support Services Manager, said:
“The quality and accuracy of BMF PµSL parts is very unique, and truly mimic expensive micro molded parts, but now we can have parts ready for test within 1-2 days rather than 1-2 months, as well as levitating the huge costs associated with tooling manufacture and reworking as the new products evolve. We can also explore designs previously out of reach due to manufacturing limitations. Our main focus is to lift our prototyping capabilities to the highest possible level, both in quality and speed. BMF will help us to accomplish that.”
It is still very early days yet for micro- and nanoprinting and the potential is considerable, including for optics, high-end electronics, and defense applications. If they can make parts cost effective enough for truly high-volume work remains to be seen. At the moment, BMF is replacing micro molding in certain tools and assemblies where this is advantageous because of the geometry, production run, or the economics of their system as compared to molding. In this case, companies can often have real cost advantages through directly 3D printing these parts. This is a relatively straight forward, short sales cycle path to making components and selling things to customers. Rather than try to convince people that they should invest in a machine they can just bid on production runs of parts and get volume business this way. Then later the company could scale towards getting a machine.
The scale of the company’s ambition and its direction is shown by opting to start in Asia in Shenzhen. The city is a maelstrom of making things and is the global HQ of the electronics industry. In Shenzhen, you can find any part for any application. By putting in its service there, the company is aiming squarely to be a solutions provider for electronics manufacturing.
Rather than opt for more high-end applications or to grow in medical, the company is here going for volume. I like that this approach will force them to be cost effective and have to deliver on volumes by a certain date. This should make them and their equipment much better, exposing them to the cliff face of capitalism that Shenzhen is. I do worry that, at one point, their technology may lead to Shenzhen Micro Fabrication and other similar copycat firms, especially since BMF fits so well in China’s future economic plans.
Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter
Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
You May Also Like
Pressing Refresh: What CEO Brad Kreger and Velo3D Have Learned About Running a 3D Printing Company
To whatever extent a business is successful thanks to specialization, businesses will nonetheless always be holistic entities. A company isn’t a bunch of compartments that all happen to share the...
Würth Additive Launches Digital Inventory Services Platform Driven by 3D Printing
Last week, at the Additive Manufacturing Users’ Group (AMUG) Conference in Chicago (March 10-14), Würth Additive Group (WAG) launched its new inventory management platform, Digital Inventory Services (DIS). WAG is...
Hypersonic Heats Up: CEO Joe Laurienti on the Success of Ursa Major’s 3D Printed Engine
“It’s only been about 24 hours now, so I’m still digesting it,” Joe Laurienti said. But even via Zoom, it was easy to notice that the CEO was satisfied. The...
Ricoh to Open 3D Printing Center of Excellence at North Carolina State University
Japanese 2D-to-3D printing firm Ricoh is further extending its activities in the additive manufacturing (AM) sector, this time partnering with North Carolina State University to establish a Center of Excellence....