The blossoming of the 3D printing industry has brought a whole series of businesses into full bloom, one of which is the field of product development and prototyping. But, Silicon Valley, where business innovation is thought to occur quite frequently, may be a desert when it comes to rapid prototyping firms – at least, according to one company. Focus Product Design hopes to be the desert rose that Silicon Valley’s been missing.
Thanks to the recent acquisition of an Objet Eden 260V 3D Printer, Focus Product Design (or Focus PD) can claim to be one of the few product design firms to offer industrial 3D printing services in the San Francisco Peninsula, despite the densely populated maker movement in the area. Alongside Focus PD’s other, more traditional manufacturing, design and prototyping services, such as injection moulding and metal machining, 3D printing will aid the firm in providing a quick method of prototype production necessary to bring San Francisco business ideas to life. As the company’s CEO, Adam Tavin puts it, “Traditionally, engineers might expect to lose 1-2 days, and experience higher costs if they are shipping 3D Printed parts in from, say Chicago. This is a key benefit Silicon Valley companies have been missing — local 3D Printing services, close enough to pop by, pick up their own parts and meet project deadlines.”
Because of the high-end quality of the Object Eden 260V and Focus PD’s experience, the firm certainly won’t be intimidated by small hackerspaces and start-ups making their way into the prototype and design field, but they may face competition from companies like UPS. The office solutions provider has recently begun to add rapid prototyping and product development services to their chain of UPS stores already established across the country, beginning with San Diego. At the moment, it will be difficult to see which companies will survive the increasingly competitive design and prototyping market. Will long-time designers and manufacturers, like the one-stop Focus PD shop, prove that production experience is key? Or will large companies with a secure infrastructure, like UPS, demonstrate that what matters is a named-brand already populating the landscape? Or, maybe there’s room for all sizes of solutions in the market, including the small fry makers and even distributed manufacturing networks.
Source: Herald Online
