Posted on

Carbon Releases the L1 3D Printer

Carbon has been making progress rolling out its 3D printers worldwide. The company has new directors, expanded its partnership with Ford and boldly reduced the prices on its resins. The company now takes a new step with the release of its L1 3D printer. The L1 has ten times the build volume of the M1 printer and five times the build volume of an M2 and is meant to be a manufacturing device. Interestingly the company says that “Products need to be validated by Carbon in the design phase in order to be printed on an L1 to ensure quality.” For certain industries not being able to validate their own designs could be a limitation. We reached out to the company for comment and they responded to tell us that,

“Validation is comprehensive and addresses all parts going into production. For adidas, that means different sizes and left and right models of the same shoe. For Riddell, every helmet is custom designed, so a broad array of designs are validated. For other applications, validation of one part could be sufficient to validate a closely related family of parts. Validation is an integral part of designing each Carbon Solution and is included in pricing the solution.”

Carbon’s power washing tools and the integrated software that comes with the system can be used in conjunction. Carbon’s materials will also be available. The solution comes replete with QA tools and monitoring to assure that you can control your production. Carbon’s products are developed in lockstep with each other and this level of tight integration means a tightly controlled ecosystem and should entail better ease of use. Carbon has always done this kind of thing in a very Apple-like way. This does mean that firms can go from a standstill to volume quickly but once we start targeting hundreds of thousands of parts wouldn’t companies want more control and more ability to use their own materials, settings, and procedures?

The company reports that:

“adidas and Carbon partnered to design and manufacture the adidas 4D midsole, and the L1 printer was one of the key innovations that made this possible. Together, we produced 100,000 pairs of the 4D midsoles in 2018. Our plan is to further scale the production of 4D shoes to millions in the coming years.”

If they pull off making millions of shoes then this indeed would be quite the coup for the technology. Only a few years ago I was very skeptical of Carbon being able to make 100,000 midsoles. I appear to stand corrected on that front, and with regards to Carbon apparently having made 100,000 midsoles for shoes that people are wearing today I congratulate them. I still am skeptical of Carbon being able to make shoe soles and midsoles that work in the real world, however. One firm that may make me partially more positive on this is Riddell. The American Football gear group is turning to Carbon to make helmet liners.

“Riddell and Carbon have partnered to be the first to bring customized, digitally printed helmet liners to market. Riddell’s SpeedFlex Precision Diamond is the first football helmet to have a digitally manufactured football helmet liner.”

The SpeedFlex Precision line is customized precision fit football helmet and indeed liners would seem to be a more doable application for the technology. It is precisely this kind of a combination of using 3D printing to develop mass customized higher functionality products that will deliver a lot of value for 3D printing in the future. Riddell itself has been working on custom made football helmets for a number of years now. By making a conventionally manufactured helmet and custom liners the company has a separation of concern which means that the process will not be costly and be relatively straightforward to implement. This paradigm is an excellent way of thinking about enabling mass customization for consumer goods.

The seven custom 3D printed pads that make up the liner.

Carbon definitely seems to be making progress in delivering increased yield and throughput to customers. On the business development side, the company also seems to have laser-like focus in finding those clients on the cusp of significant mass customization initiatives and partnering with them. What do you think? Is my caution unwarranted and should I be more optimistic?

Posted on

Customers Customizing Their Own 3D Printed Razor Handles with Gillette’s New Razor Maker Platform

Everywhere you look, there’s customization and personalization in the products we use daily – we consumers definitely like the items we use to reflect our preferences and personal tastes. And in today’s world of advanced manufacturing, it’s easier than ever to connect everyday products with personalized experiences to form bonds with customers…and get us to buy things, of course. Now, razor manufacturer Gillette is turning to 3D printing again, this time to pilot its new Razor Maker concept and open up consumer personalization with 3D printed razor handles.

The new platform is a great example of direct-to-consumer, end-use 3D printed parts, as Razor Maker is giving consumers the power to create and order their own customized razor handles. Fabricated on Form 2 3D printers, there are 48 different designs to choose from, with more coming later, along with a variety of colors; there’s even an option to add custom text to your razor handle.

Donato Diez, global brand manager for Gillette and Razor Maker co-founder, said, “Our partnership with Formlabs, and the power of their 3D printers, enable consumers to have a say on how their razors should look. We are excited to work with our Boston neighbors to pilot this breakthrough concept of customization.

“For Gillette, piloting Razor Maker represents a crucial step in our customization journey where new technology and new business models must come together in order to deliver products that are as unique as our consumers.”

Gillette’s Razor Maker concept brings design freedom to the final product in a new business model that could change how companies work across the whole product lifecycle. This is more than just a 3D printed razor handle, my friends – it’s a look at the future of mass-customized products.

Evan Smith, global product manager for Razor Maker, said, “We know consumers today are looking for brands that innovate in ways that let them express themselves – and that’s exactly what this pilot is all about.”

Razor Maker had to totally rethink its approach to manufacturing in order to deliver such customization. So back to the 3D printed razor handle itself – the first process steps are totally digital. First, the customer customizes their own unique handle through the platform’s website. Next, the final design is converted into a 3D file by Razor Maker.

Then, multiple design files are sent to a Form 2 3D printer to be printed at the same time in one batch. Once the handles are done printing, they’re washed, post-cured, coated, and assembled, before they’re shipped right to the customer’s door in 2-3 weeks.

“The Razor Maker concept allows us to create a new design, print and test it, and then the next day that design becomes a new handle available on the website. That was never possible before,” said Rob Johnson, a design engineer and Razor Maker co-founder.

The designers of some of the original Razor Maker handles were inspired by many of the geometries and shapes often seen in architecture, nature, and even technology, but would be tough to reproduce through conventional methods of manufacturing.

“It allows us to think about form in a way that was never possible before. In a traditional sense, we could only do one or two razor designs a year, whereas now we can have an idea, create it in 3D, print it, look at it, adjust it, and say that’s it,” said Rory McGarry, industrial design lead at Razor Maker.

Easy customization like this is one of the hallmarks of 3D printing, which Gillette previously only used for prototyping purposes. No tooling is required, there’s no up-front investment in molds, and the costs of having to produce several complex design iterations to find the optimal one are gone. It’s easy to scale custom manufacturing by just adding more 3D printers, and the lack of design constraints makes it easy for consumers to make razors that are entirely personalized – good news in a market where we see a lot of mass-produced stuff for sale.

Johnson said, “Combining our best shaving technology with the power and flexibility of 3D printing opens up a whole new world of product design possibilities.”

In addition to its new Razor Maker platform, Gillette is also working with Formlabs to possibly automate its 3D printing production processes. The company is one of the first testers of Form Cell, its relatively new automated production system.

Discuss this story and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the comments below.

[Source/Images: Formlabs]