For Chuck Kennedy, the hot new field of 3D printing is not that new. He has been in the industry for 20 years, going back to the days when the process was known as rapid prototyping. Originally an engineering technician for the earliest machines, Kennedy started his own equipment service company specializing in Polyjet ™3D printers in 2006. In May 2012, Kennedy launched his EDGE PDM in Oregon and began helping people turn ideas into prototype reality with product development services.
One year ago, Kennedy relocated Edge PDM to the Rio Grande Valley, bringing with him one of the largest selections of industrial, in-house Polyjet 3D printers in North America. Through the Edge Web site, his nationwide slate of customers followed him. Fortune 100 companies and the large corporations in North Carolina and California, as well as startups, have contracted Edge to make their prototypes and help develop their products. Edge’s 3D printers have turned out medical and surgical devices, cell phone cases, emblem logos, gaskets, self-defense devices, rubber-like golf grips, and fluid transfer tubes for the oil and gas industries. Many items now have patents pending.
“We can turn projects around that day or the next business day. It truly is rapid prototyping,” Kennedy said. There are two types of manufacturing, he explained. The first, subtractive, involves removing material with a lathe or through machining, for example, to create the product. Addictive manufacturing, in contrast, describes what 3D printing does: it adds layer after nearly microscopic layer of a polymer resin to build a product to exact specifications.
As a job shop for prototyping, design and development, Edge invested in five of the highest capability 3D printers on the market, Kennedy said. “We can build prototypes with very high accuracy and high resolution.” Instead of jetting ink onto a 2D platform, the Polyjet streams a polymer resin in a threadlike manner. Each layer is only .0006 of an inch thick. Many products are tremendously intricate.
CAD 3D software programs such as SolidWorks, ProE or Catia provide the file formats that guide the 3D printers which externally resemble massive photocopiers. Inside, a moving head goes back and forth over the foundation surface putting down layers and curing them with a UV light source. Surfaces and layers of a single component can incorporate different resins, resulting, for example, in pliable rubber sides with a rigid plastic top.
If customers cannot create 3D file formats, Edge PDM can transform the customer’s sketches or drawings into 3D programs. Some customers arrive with only an idea and have Edge do their design work as well as prototyping
For more of this story by Eileen Mattei, pick up a copy of the September print edition of Valley Business Report or visit the “Current & Past Issues” tab on this Web site.