Flexibility Is the Bottom Line: Touring the Visitech Americas DLP Light Engine Factory

Visitech, a leader in optics for digital light processing (DLP) and powder bed fusion (PBF), recently expanded its footprint in the U.S. with a new factory in Allen, Texas. This is the company’s first DLP light engine factory in the U.S. In fact, it’s the first facility of its kind in the whole country. I was able to see Visitech Americas and its factory for myself last week when I visited the Dallas area.

Facility Tour & Company Culture

The company, which is headquartered in Norway and also has facilities in Germany, China, and Japan, held the official grand opening of its Texas location about two months ago. Adam Kunzman, Managing Director of Visitech Americas, told me that the worldwide team came to Texas for company-wide meetings and to celebrate the opening.

Visitech Americas is “functionally split” for efficiency across four suites on the first floor of an office building in Allen. Visitech Americas COO Amanda Kunzman showed me around the first three, one of which comprises shipping and inventory, along with a soldering station and space for electronics work. R&D and customer support work take place in that suite, as well. There’s also an administrative suite, and a third suite houses the engineering section, which is where lifetime testing is done and where engineers try to recreate and ultimately fix any customer issues.

The fourth suite is the clean room, which only recently opened.

“Until we finished the clean room, we were in a constant state of churn,” Adam Kunzman told me. “We immediately started to use that [the clean room] to support fourth quarter customer deliveries. It’s still not completely set up, but the good news is that we had the demand. We’re finally settling down and building now, and will spend time early next year to set things up a bit more.”

The facility is strategically located near electronics giant Texas Instruments (TI), which is a key company partner. Kunzman actually came from TI’s DLP group, working with consumer displays and electronics there before starting Keynote Photonics. That company lasted about 15 years before it was acquired by Visitech, the founders of which Kunzman actually knew from his time at TI.

“We reestablished those connections in Keynote’s latter years, and started discussing how we could cooperate more closely and integrate the teams. Then, a small thing called COVID happened, so we had to put that on the back burner until we could travel again,” he explained. “The company cultures between both teams were very similar, and it was very easy to blend both. The teams work well together, and there’s complementary knowledge in terms of core competency in areas related to DLP technology.”

Speaking of company culture, it seems very friendly at Visitech Americas. In the administrative suite, I saw the shuffleboard table where the team plays short tournaments on Friday afternoons, and a long conference table where they all enjoy lunch together once a week.

“We celebrate the successes and challenges. That’s really important for our culture,” Kunzman said.

Flexibility

Kunzman said the company started thinking about building this new facility about two years ago after “seeing how geopolitics were migrating between different countries and the U.S.” Extra capacity wasn’t needed at the time, but Visitech realized it needed to build flexibility into future plans “to allow for whatever eventuality came up.”

“It was a fortuitous decision, as we’re seeing lots of numbers being thrown around about tariffs. So, we feel good about that decision.”

Kunzman said there are three legs to the company’s business stool: 3D printing, lithography, and the third encompasses other applications developed over the years, like life sciences and 3D measurements. The intent of the Texas facility was to take care of everything there—from engineering and support to manufacturing, final testing, and repair work for all product lines—instead of having to send products elsewhere.

“It improves the logistics. There’s a much better cycle time in communicating with customers, and we can dialogue with them here and support folks going forward,” he said. “That’s the difference between rapid prototyping and machines running all the time across multiple countries, time zones and sites. We’re flexible. That’s the bottom line. If we need to go and eventually build everything from projection lenses to final assemblies, we have the capability and the facility to do it. Having that capability gives our customers assurance, and provides continuity of supply.”

Building just about everything at its facility also enables Visitech Americas to control the supply chain, and custom design its products. This includes a custom LED module called Bifrost, named for the bridge in Norse mythology that connects Midgard to Asgard, realm of the gods. The module is reusable, with no-leak water connectors, and fairly simple to replace, as you can just unscrew it and put a new one in; Visitech is trying to be more conscious of minimizing its carbon footprint and maximizing material usage.

Kunzman also showed me one of the company’s 4K projection chips, made by TI. These have 4,096 pixels in a row, as opposed to the 2K chips, with 2,560 pixels in a row. The 2K, which supports the full UV range, has been around for years, as Visitech has long used these in its lithography machines. The 4K chips, which are just “coming out the door,” only support a standard UV window now, but TI is working on one that will support the full range.

The Clean Room

Kunzman took me on a tour of the clean room, entering through the air lock where all products come in. Right inside, there was a space for RMA processing and repair work, which are “not necessarily production flow.” There was a lot of empty space inside the clean room, which Kunzman said was “intentional.”

“Again, we put in this facility to have flexibility, as opposed to filling it up with different things right away,” he explained.

We walked past a test stage, and saw one of the company’s lithography units, which was made for small pixel sizes that expose dry or wet photoresists. These units feature multiple heads, which go back and forth, side by side, like what you’d see for scrolling products. The systems feature a bar of projectors in a row on a motion stage, which move across the material and fire over 1,000 times during printing.

“These need to be in the right place all the time. That’s why we do so much testing,” Kunzman explained. “Just think about the amounts of data—there’s terabytes of data being sent. It takes a lot of time to go through that process. It’s all about optics and mechanics, but the software and electronics have to work hand in hand to make those work.”

We went through another air lock into a separate clean room, where the optical work happens. There were projection lenses on the table next to the corresponding projectors, all of which will be assembled and shipped out before the end of the year.

“We’re taking the projectors and basically characterizing each system. On the bottom, there are different sensors and cameras and such that are scanning the lens in order to map all its characteristics. That information gets put into the test data, which goes to customers. And then they use that information so they can slice and re-sample data in order to account for each system,” Kunzman explained.

“When you’re trying to have each printer have the same performance level over time and over system to system to system, especially when it gets into the finer geometries, then you have to do this level of characterization and mapping in order to execute that.”

There was another area for testing the products before they’re shipped out, and this is more than just due diligence. Kunzman said the tests are run 24/7, because “consistency and predictability in the firmware is super important for these systems.” The constant testing isn’t cheap, so this affects the pricing of the products Visitech puts out.

“We’ve never said we’re the cheapest system on the block, but we do want to have excellent cost of ownership for the customer,” he said.

Visitech incorporates advanced liquid-cooling systems into its light engines, because both DLP chips and LEDs like the cold to maximize their lifetimes.

“We’ve seen our air-cooled systems come back and they look like they’ve been through Desert Storm! They’ve got dust between the lens and the DMD chip. By using water and avoiding air cooling, you’re going to have a much cleaner system.”

Kunzman told me that what sets Visitech’s Neos platform of DLP projectors apart from the competition, and enables consistency across its platform, are a flexible API, a high power optical system, and the aforementioned water cooling systems.

Future Plans

Kunzman said the company sees opportunities growing, and is looking at 2025 as “a bit of a wait and see.”

“Uncertainty in what’s going to happen in tariffs adds less clarity to the future, and not more. But I think we’re in the right position to go off and support whatever the market provides.”

Because Visitech is based on a DLP platform, some of what they do depends on what TI is developing, “and then we build that out.” But the company is always working towards other components, like the projection chips, that are complementary to the overall product offering.

Kunzman also said that it’s important to the company “to collaborate where research is happening,” which is why it’s previously partnered with universities and research institutions in Texas.

“As much as we are focused on the photo part of photopolymers, the polymer side has to be coming up to speed too. So, coordinating and understanding where chemists see opportunity and innovations, and trying to be understanding of what’s going on there, that gives us an idea of how to develop our products.”

When so many other companies in the AM industry are struggling, I believe that putting a high emphasis on flexibility and consistency is what will allow Visitech America to keep moving forward.