Mcor, the Ireland-based manufacturer of affordable, full-colour and eco-friendly 3D printers that produce models using paper, is strutting its stuff at the RAPID 2014 event this week in Detroit. News bulletins coming from the company on the show floor are numerous and diverse.
First off, Mcor announced that the Mcor IRIS, the company’s full-colour 3D printer, is the first 3D printer to include an International Color Consortium (ICC) profile. What this means is that the IRIS 3D printer is able to precisely produce industry-standard colours as presented in a photographer’s, engineer’s or designer’s photograph, CAD model, scan or illustration. Mcor identified that without the ICC profile, 3D printers translate incoming colours to machine-specific ones, introducing unintended changes in the 3D printed colour along the way. Dr. Conor MacCormack, co-founder and CEO of Mcor Technologies Ltd. noted how important accurate colouring is for creative or marketing professionals, a key target market for the 3D printing industry. He said: “That’s why standards exist, and why we are the first 3D printer manufacturer to embrace them. A gram is a gram and a meter is a meter anywhere on the planet because of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Likewise, a company’s logo will be the same colour on the computer screen as on a model 3D printed by the Mcor IRIS because of our ICC profile. The result is a truly what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) experience.”
The ICC is an international organisation for colour management, and the Mcor ICC profile is calibrated to device-independent Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage, International Commission on Illumination, (CIE) colours.
Mcor also announced an enhanced user experience that for the first time makes design files ready to print as they’re received. The new automated file-fixing software, included with every Mcor 3D printer, removes unseen geometries that can complicate 3D printing of sophisticated models. On this new development, Conor said: “This solves a problem that has dogged the CAD industry for years. It has helped us achieve our goal of a one-click solution that makes any STL file geometrically printable.”
Mcor went on to further announce a new flexible finishing option for 3D prints coming off its 3D printers, called Mcor FLEX. The aim is to offer users the option to produce pliable 3D printed models that are water resistant, while remaining true to Mcor’s ethos of providing 3D printing technology that is low cost, accessible and durable. Because the paper is 70% porous, it acts like a scaffold for the infiltrant, enabling it to take on the properties of that infiltrant material. Flexible 3D printed model properties are achieved with Mcor FLEX by quickly and easily treating 3D printed models produced on Mcor IRIS and Matrix 3D printers with Mcor’s specially formulated water-based PVA coating.
What these developments show is that Mcor is a company that continues to go from strength to strength as it builds and expands on its core values. This was in evidence with the recent funding round Mcor pulled in, and illustrated even more strongly by the company’s growth figures, released just today, that show an increase of 227% in Mcor’s sales and distribution channel and a phenomenal increase of 308% in 3D printer sales. All aspects of the company are seeing expansion, including recruitment and R&D.
You might well wonder what is next for the company. In an interview Conor MacCormack gave to the Motley Fool this week, there is a hint that an IPO may be on the horizon, but it is certainly not imminent. He told interviewer, Steve Heller:
“Well, we’ve made a decision. We’re in the process of doing a very big funding round in the company, so we’ve made the decision to build the company up, to develop this new IP that we’ve filed, to bring these new products to market. Then we’ll see what happens.
I think people are almost putting pressure [on us] — “You need to IPO because the market’s going to stay open” — but if you have a very good product, and you have a very good company, I think the market will always be open.
We believe that we’ll be in that situation this year or next year….It will be a very good story, and we’ll see what happens then.”
He also teased that there is plenty more to come from this company: “I know we are working on some stuff that’s really ground-breaking. I know people throw that around a lot, like “the next revolution” and all, but we have some stuff that is really, really new.”
