Cool Stuff . . . page 3

ProtoCulture . . . page 6

Case Study . . . page 7

DIYpages 4 & 5

A Magical Time Looms for Designers, Inventors,

and Entrepreneurs

Manufacturing

Back when Proto Labs, then called Protomold®, was born we envisioned a prototyping service for manufacturers, a place where they could get real molded parts for testing before committing to traditional steel-tool molding. It quickly became clear that we had more to offer, and Proto Labs became, besides a source of real-material prototypes, a supplier of production parts. In some cases we simply bridged the gap between development and mass production while steel tools were being made; in others we became the final source of parts in runs of hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands. At the same time, other new capabilities—digital collaboration, CAD modeling, 3D printing, non-traditional funding, and online sales—were becoming available to small companies, individual designers, and even hobbyists, ultimately giving birth to the “maker movement.” Suddenly the lone inventor had access to a community of like-minded creators and could build a market while still designing the product. Prospective buyers could help fund development with their preorders. Rough prototypes could be built up in-house by 3D printing. And when the product was ready for functional testing with engineering-grade plastics or metals,

or for volume production by injection molding, Proto Labs was right there to machine or mold the parts. Fundamentally, the process of creation hasn’t changed; ideas still grow and develop—become images and then virtual and physical models—on their way to becoming products. What has changed is the tools and services used in the process and, perhaps more importantly, their availability. As Makers author Chris Anderson points out, there has been a significant democratization of manufacturing, in access to both in-house tools and outsourced services (see book review on page 5). CAD software and 3D printers, once the exclusive property of corporate development labs, are now working their way onto kitchen tables and into public school classrooms. And while the large manufacturer may have long had a fully equipped machine shop and injection molding facilities or the wherewithal to have steel molding tools made, the small producer can now upload a 3D CAD model to Proto Labs and get the same results, as fast or faster and at modest cost. For maker and manufacturer alike, the continuum from sketch to product has become virtually seamless, allowing small producers to compete with their larger brethren and spurring

the development of “the long tail of things”. While large and small producers may take different paths to completion of their projects, those paths increasingly coincide at points along the way. I’m pleased to see that several of those points are here at Proto Labs, where we continue to expand our capabilities, exploring technologies like thixomolding of magnesium and metal injection molding of steel. As always, I hope you find this issue of The Journal informative and enjoyable.

Brad Cleveland, CEO

brad.cleveland@protolabs.com

> WHAT’S UP? HOW ARE

WE DOING?“I was amazed at the turnaround time and the quality that I received in a very short time frame to work with. I will definitely be using Firstcut® again.”

— Brandon Barnard

“All of my bosses and colleagues were impressed with the price and delivery from Firstcut®. Please keep up the good work.”

— Dennis Rockwell, Multi Products Inc.

“Very easy and quick process, nicely done. Thank you.”

— Rick Bos, Ventra Plastics

“Proto Labs has been one of few vendors we use that actually sticks to the deadlines and the quality of parts are exceptional. When we need parts done very quickly, Proto Labs is our source. Thank you.”

— Fyodor Grechka, FloDesign Wind Turbine

“Excellent quality and breathtaking speed! Gave us functional test and appearance models from the same parts. A refreshingly drama-free service, I look forward to our next project together—working with a leading Orthopaedic Surgeon on new protective sports equipment.”

— Stuart Cooper, Xylotek

We would love to hear from you! Send your comments to us at news@protolabs.com.

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Impressive Engineer Facebook Page

The “About” blurb pretty much sums it up: “This is a very interesting page for all. Join us and invite all your friends for brilliant ideas. This page welcomes you.” Intriguing, inspiring, inclusive, the Beautiful Engineering page features posts on everything from the world’s largest tidal power plant (it’s in South Korea) to an upside-down house (complete with an upside-down car seemingly parked in midair), to kitchen tips (freeze fresh herbs in olive oil in ice cube trays) to a swingset for kids in wheelchairs. Beautiful Engineering attracts a lively international community, and will definitely add creativity and enjoyment to your Facebook experience.

www.facebook.com/ImpressiveEngineer

MYO

The time has come to start living your Jedi dream! With the MYO armband, you can control all manner of computers, using just the electrical activity in your muscles. You wave your hand, you flick your fingers, and like magic, your devices obey your commands! Compatible with Mac and PC operating systems, the MYO works right out of the box for presentations, games, web browsing, video editing, music making and all kinds of other activities. (Check out the video on the MYO website—you’ll see some cool stuff, including a skier controlling a helmet-mounted camera and uploading footage of his moves on the fly.) The company is opening up an API to developers looking to sync MYO with new and cool applications—pretty much anything with Bluetooth or remote control capability. Preorder yours now and be the first on your block—MYO is scheduled to begin shipping later in 2013. www.getmyo.com

Filabot

The Filabot desktop extruding system is a maker’s dream—a mini recycling plant that grinds up waste plastic and produces filament for creating new stuff with 3D printers. Able to filament-ize a variety of waste plastics—everything from milk jugs and water pipes to Legos and luggage—the Filabot was invented by college student Tyler McNaney, who launched it on Kickstarter as a way to make 3D printing more affordable and sustainable. Beyond the obvious appeal for innovative types at home, the machine has exciting possibilities in the developing world. On the company’s website you’ll find a link to vote for Filabot in the Dell Social Innovation Challenge. The idea is to provide the systems to third world countries, where they could be used to make useful everyday objects like cups or forks with plastic that would otherwise be waste. As they say on the site, “By helping us, you can turn plastic into the solution!”

www.filabot.com

> COOL STUFF

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DIY Manufacturing: A Magical Time Looms for Designers, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs

> COVER STORY

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, inventor, and futurist,

famously noted: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

This comment comes to mind when considering the astonishing advance of do-it-yourself manufacturing. In 2007, the Institute for the Future issued a report that heralded the coming of DIY manufacturing. Its introduction is worth revisiting: “Rapid fabrication technologies allow 3D objects to be created from a computerized design nearly as easily as a DVD burner makes playable disks. Until recently, these objects were limited to a single constituent material, often a fragile wax or imprecise resin. But today, 3D printers can use manufacturing-grade materials to make a limited variety of industrial and commercial objects. On the near horizon are fabricators that will be able to produce electronic gadgetry, toys, and even industrial-grade equipment. And further out is the potential development of molecular manufacturing.

As these devices improve, they’ll trigger a manufacturing transformation in traditional

factories; quite possibly, they’ll also end up in homes and offices, reshaping our concept of the consumer economy.” One of the most renowned authorities on the subject is Wired editor Chris Anderson, whose recent book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution is essential reading for anyone

looking to understand this phenomenon. In a recent interview on the Wharton School’s Knowledge@Wharton, Anderson speaks to The Maker Movement (which he defines as the web generation meeting the real world) and defines the enabling elements that have set DIY manufacturing ablaze:1) Desktop digital fabrication tools which are cheap, easy,

and accessible.2) Access to manufacturing, factories and mass production

is now also increasingly easy. It has basically turned into a web service.

3) The notion of community. The instinct to do things in public, the instinct to share, the instinct to collaborate with people who you don’t know, the instinct to apply invention, creation, and production to physical things that need to be produced and sold.

These elements form, he says, “an innovation model that traditional manufacturing doesn’t have.” The question has been posed as to whether designers or the technologies themselves are revolutionizing product design and production. Simple; you can’t have magic without magicians. The enablement of DIY manufacturing is at a basic level more powerful magic for our traditional product magicians—design engineers and inventors—to work with in transforming the world of products and manufacturing. Anderson describes the latter transformation in the Wharton interview as he recalls his grandfather, who worked in a studio by day and was an inventor by night: “He was quite skilled. He was a machinist, he had a workshop, he had all sorts of metalworking equipment, so

PAGE 4

he was able to take his ideas from the mechanical drafting table to a prototype. But then at that point, he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know how to bring it to market and neither did most people. It was hard; you needed to have a factory and distribution and all those other skills. He did what you had to do in those days, which was patent it and then try to find someone to license it. The point was that he was an inventor, but he could not become an entrepreneur because those additional steps of mass production, distribution, marketing, et cetera, were essentially inaccessible in those days. All you could do was patent, license and hope for the best. You had to lose control of your invention. You had to hand it off to somebody else.” Today, because of the ‘magic’ of DIY manufacturing, that loss of control is no longer the fate of designers and inventors, because they now have the digitally-enabled power to be entrepreneurs as well. As DIY technology continues to advance (even to funding, as seen in platforms such as Kickstarter), the world is opening more readily for designers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The impetus is also having an effect in the commercial arena, where on-demand, low-volume custom manufacturing services are

available on the web from Proto Labs. Injection molded and machined parts are now available in small quantities and are shipped in days, not weeks, through Proto Labs’ Protomold and Firstcut services. Proto Labs uses proprietary software running on large-scale computers to translate 3D CAD design into instructions for high-speed CNC milling equipment and associated manufacturing processes. The result: start-ups can now get the responsiveness expected from additive rapid prototyping processes without having to live with limited material choices or stair-step surface finishes. Companies and entrepreneurs who have 3D CAD can simply upload their files via the Proto Labs website and get one-off parts for as little as $95. “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible,” said Clarke. “The continuing development of DIY manufacturing and other advanced technologies will help assure that we will continue to do this.”

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On-demand, low-volume custom

manufacturing services are available.

Small quantities are shipped in days,

not weeks.

There are business books that could be abridged to a 20-page pamphlet without sacrificing much of their content. This is not one of them! Chris Anderson takes us on a wild ride from the 18th century weavers’ cottages of Lancashire and 19th century mills of Manchester to the city-size factories of Guangdong and on to the maker spaces and kitchen-table development labs popping up wherever entrepreneurs have access to the Internet. As a former writer for The Economist and now editor in chief of Wired, Anderson is well qualified to explore the “maker” phenomenon that is democratizing the production of things the way the Internet democratized retail and software development a decade or so ago. But Anderson has done more than chronicle the changes. He

has turned what began as his own hobby-level interest in developing a robot-controlled flying toy into a social network—DIYDrones.com—and then into 3D Robotics, a multimillion dollar business. For obvious reasons, the author devotes significant space to the technologies that make the new democratization possible: 3D scanners to capture input from the physical world; CAD software for creating virtual models from scratch; and desktop 3D printers, CNC machines, and laser cutters for turning designs into material parts. He addresses the global ecosystem that has developed—

“the factory in the cloud” that allows designers to outsource various aspects of design, production, marketing, and distribution. But perhaps most significantly, he provides a primer on building an organization that

can compete on more-or-less equal footing with the manufacturing giants of previous generations to produce anything from unique craft objects to automobiles. The author describes today’s emerging industrial organization as

“small pieces, loosely joined.” Less formal than traditional companies, these are often made up of non-employee affiliates and specialized external resources with specific expertise or capabilities. In many cases they are drawn together for a specific project rather than as a permanent company. As a business model it allows the best resources to bemarshaled for a specific project, resulting in nimble response to markets and rapid turnaround that larger organizations with their fixed staffing and large overhead cannot match. And, by accessing global resources via the Internet and selling back to global markets, these small companies can compete on an equal footing with the larger companies. Automation at all levels is reducing costs of production, and while it eliminates manufacturing jobs it is, by its ready availability, opening entrepreneurial opportunities to design, develop and produce products. A generation ago it would have been difficult if not impossible for small or custom producers to compete

in a world of mass production and mass marketing. But, as Anderson first pointed out in his previous book, The Long Tail, it is now possible to economically produce custom low-volume products and to economically market them via the Internet to worldwide markets. Small groups of individuals with shared interests can form communities to help design products and can “crowdfund” their production through sites like Kickstarter. Such processes of development and funding help reduce risk by market testing designs and building demand before the products have even been created. While the book doesn’t quite lay out a template for turning an idea into a business it does present a convincing argument that it can be done and that all the necessary tools and resources are out there and accessible. It provides dozens of case studies including garage startups that have used those very tools and resources to become large industrial producers. And it provides an appendix listing resources for those who haven’t bothered to take notes while reading the preceding pages. In short, it may be the rare reader who will finish Makers without wondering (unless he or she is already doing so) why they aren’t making and selling into this burgeoning worldwide market.

> PROTOCULTURE

PAGE 6

Finding Your Place in the “Internet of Things”Makers: The New Industrial RevolutionAuthor: Chris Anderson

Publisher: Crown Business, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-307-72095-5

Intravenous (IV) therapy is one of the fastest ways to deliver fluids or medication to the body, but it requires particular care to ensure that it is done safely. That is the specialty of I.V. House, Inc., a full line manufacturer of devices that protect the IV insertion site, catheter hub, and tubing from mechanical manipulation. One of the company’s newest products is an armboard that allows inspection of the insertion site and palmar side of a child’s hand and forearm to detect I.V. complications. “An armboard immobilizes the wrist to prevent motion,” says I.V. House, Inc. President and Clinical Director Lisa M. Vallino, RN, BSN. “The tape or bandage that holds traditional armboards in place covers large areas of the forearm, making it difficult to see swelling or redness that would indicate problems. An adult can report discomfort, but children, particularly infants, cannot, which is why visual examination is so important.” Vallino was already aware of this problem when she met pediatric nurse Jennifer Marusich, who envisioned a contoured armboard with large cutout areas. “It was a brilliant idea,” says Vallino, who partnered with Marusich to patent the concept. “Children’s IVs

should be visually checked every hour, and this design makes it easy.” Vallino turned to Metaphase Design Group for help in turning the concept into a product called the TLC Board. “Lisa came to us with about 20 cardboard mockups,” says industrial designer Cooper Priess of Metaphase.

“We made about 40 cardboard mockups of our own and showed them to professional nurses for feedback. For a project like this, cardboard mockups are the 3D equivalent of napkin sketches.” Based on input from the nurses, a final design was chosen, and Priess developed it further using SolidWorks CAD software. “Our first prototype was produced using SLA (stereolithography),” says Priess. “SLA is useful for assessing fit, but it doesn’t always demonstrate material properties accurately.” The next step was to choose a material. That was when Priess introduced Vallino to Proto Labs. “I hadn’t worked with them before,” says Priess, “but we needed prototypes we could test in hospitals with real patients and clinicians, and I knew they could produce real injection molded parts in low to medium volumes.” “Cooper designed the

armboard in three children’s sizes,” says Vallino. “We sent the medium-size model to Proto Labs for prototyping

in polypropylene (PP), high density polyethylene (HDPE), and low density polyethylene (LDPE). For feedback on color we got prototypes in blue, orange, and neutral. When we got the parts we realized that even the stiffest of the three was not rigid enough to send to our focus groups, so we had new ones made using stiffer polypropylene and polycarbonate. “Working with Proto Labs is great,” Vallino says. “They recognized that I am not a design engineer and went out of their way to understand my goals. They showed me how we could produce parts in multiple materials and colors from one mold and how to put gates and ejector pins where their vestiges would not scratch a patient’s skin.” Once material choice has been finalized, Vallino will have Proto Labs produce 2100 boards in customer-supplied polypropylene and will send them to seven hospitals for feedback. She will then have Proto Labs produce about 2000 pieces per month while steel tools are made for full-scale production. “This is the first time I’ve worked directly with Proto Labs,” says Metaphase’s Priess, “but I will work with them again. They definitely fill an important niche in product development.”

> CASE STUDY

PAGE 7

Cardboard to Prototype: I.V. House, Inc. Invents Device to Help Support IVs Safely

> THE SPEEDWAY

A quick look at what’s new from Proto Labs

© Proto Labs 2013

USAProto Labs, Inc. 5540 Pioneer Creek Dr. Maple Plain, MN 55359 United States

877.479.3680 phone 763.479.2679 fax info@protolabs.com www.protolabs.com

EUROPEProto Labs, Ltd. Halesfield 8 Telford Shropshire TF7 4QN United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1952 683047 phone +44 (0) 1952 683048 fax info@protolabs.co.uk www.protolabs.co.uk

JAPANProto Labs G.K. 6-7-1 Chuo Rinkan Nishi Yamato-Shi, Kanagawa 243-0008 Japan

+81 (0) 46-259-9820 phone +81 (0) 46-259-9829 fax info@protolabs.co.jp www.protolabs.co.jp

© Proto Labs 2013

Join the discussion!Email article ideas, cool projects or great design stories to the editor at stacy.sullivan@protolabs.com.

MY ACCOUNT: Assigning Mold Rights Mold Access Rights allow customers to manage who has access rights to their molds. Access rights are granted at two levels — basic and full. Basic rights allow a user to view the mold and place part orders from the mold. Full rights provide the user with basic rights and the ability to grant and remove rights for other users. Rights are assigned on a per-mold basis. Users can access this functionality from the Manage Molds page, and will see separate links to order more parts or manage access depending on the rights level they have for that mold.

LONGER PICK-OUT CAMS Protomold’s side-action capabilities have significantly increased! In the past, side-actions were restricted to 2.9" length depths. We’ve recently completed experimentation, testing and software development to support side-pull maximum length up to 8". Ability to produce parts with side-pulls at the maximum length will depend on part geometry. Parts made with high shrink resins may require additional draft.

CATCH US AT THESE TRADESHOWS

OrthoTecJune 5–6, 2013 Booth #219 Grace College Warsaw, IN

Atlantic Design & ManufacturingJune 18–20, 2013 Booth #4507 Pennsylvania Convention Center Philadelphia, PA

Drug Information Association ExpoJune 24–26, 2013 Booth #1919 Boston Convention & Exhibition Center Boston, MA

AUVSI (Associaction for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International)August 12–15, 2013 Booth #4150 Walter E Washington Convention Center Washington, DC

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