Industry Directory - DyeMansion
DyeMansion
DyeMansion, the self-proclaimed “global leader in post-processing solutions for industrial polymer 3D-printing”, was founded in Munich, Germany in 2013 by Philip Kramer and Felix Ewald, the company’s CEO. Originally going by the name Trindo, the firm began as a startup making smartphone cases with 3D printers. Its first concept didn’t turn out so well: the first 200 smartphone cases Trindo produced were returned when the colors faded and left stains in customers’ pockets.
However, that initial setback is in fact what led co-founders Kramer and Ewald to stumble upon the company’s eventual specialization: the automation of finishing systems for products made using additive manufacturing (AM). In February, 2015, Trindo rebranded as DyeMansion. The next month, DyeMansion received funding from AM Ventures, the investment firm of Dr. Hans Langer, founder and CEO of EOS, the world’s leading firm for metal AM technologies. At Frankfurt, Germany’s Formnext exhibition in November 2015, the company presented the original proprietary DyeMansion technology: the DM60, the industry’s first automated coloring system for 3D-printed products made from plastics. DyeMansion won Formnext’s Start-Up Challenge with the DM60, after which it began a pilot phase on the market, working with customers such as Materialise.
Over the next year, DyeMansion started expanding beyond deepdye coloring by creating the first model in the Powershot line — a series of additive manufacturing finishing systems — which was introduced a year after the DM60, in November 2016, and also made its debut at Formnext. When 3D printed parts are manufactured industrially at high-volume, they come out rough and unready for market; the purpose of the Powershot series is to fix this with polyshot cleaning (the Powershot C model), polyshot surfacing or PSS (the Powershot S model), or both (the Powershot DUAL Performance model). Another year after debuting the Powershot, in November 2017, DyeMansion and EOS entered into a strategic partnership. By this time, the company’s brand was no longer simply a catalog of post-processing hardware, but an entire range of solutions the company refers to with the phrase “Print-to-Product workflow”. Centered around agile tooling software and DyeMansion’s suite of machines, customers could now rely entirely on DyeMansion and its partnering companies to turn 3D-printed raw parts into high quality, high-value products.
After expanding its business model, DyeMansion made the natural step towards expanding geographically, and opened its North American headquarters in Austin, Texas, in the spring of 2018. Then, in 2019, the company expanded its product line and made major innovations in 3D printing technologies yet again with the Powerfuse S. The Powerfuse S relies on vaporfuse surfacing, a method of circulating the DyeMansion’s Eco Fluid solvent on 3D-printed parts for cleaning and surfacing, which the company touts as the most environmentally-friendly method for its designated purpose. Over the next two years, DyeMansion announced several more partnerships with industry leaders, including its latest, a collaboration with Stratasys, one of the world’s biggest firms for rapid prototyping and digital manufacturing with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Evolving in less than a decade from a 3D-printed cell phone cover startup, to producing solutions for finishing everything from eyewear to automotive parts made with powder bed fusion technology, DyeMansion’s rise can be seen as an emblem for the recent history of AM, as a whole.