VELO3D recently completed US$40 million in financing and received a total of US$150 million in financing as a startup from the US West Coast. Previously, Velo3D successfully won one of the most technically demanding contracts in the manufacturing industry to provide 3D printers to SpaceX, one of the world's most successful private rocket companies. Subsequently, VELO3D announced that it had received an order from its aerospace customer of USD 20 million (over RMB 140 million).
VELO3D, not only without support
If we analyze the development of 3D printing at home and abroad from the perspective of market positioning, it is not difficult to see that most international companies have established a clear market positioning at the early stage of establishment, including those based on equipment stability, including development and improvement of processing efficiency, To the rising star like VELO3D, in the view of 3D Science Valley, unsupported is just the communication between VELO3D and users. The market positioning of VELO3D is quite clear: free design, agile production and quality assurance. These are the unique VELO3D through technology. Market positioning.
Talking about market positioning, this is the first thing every company should think about when it is based on the market. This includes how to focus. Each company's resources are limited. To obtain a clear market image, focusing is the starting point for success. Focusing is the first step to be done. Focusing on achieving competitive advantage, forming a strong brand influence, reducing Development resistance to break the point.
How to focus, understand the pain points of industry application development on the basis of focus, and build competitiveness around the pain points and development trends combined with their own advantages. Many domestic companies need to think thoroughly before entering the field of 3D printing, rather than seeing national policies Whatever you support will enter this field.
Marketing is a foreign product. The market strategy is about how to optimize the use of resources to the extreme. Unfortunately, many companies only find that market positioning is not done after investing huge amounts of money and spending years of effort. Many efforts are wasted. This is a development misconception worthy of vigilance.
Many international companies in the field of 3D printing know how to think about market positioning from the day they were founded, how to distinguish them from competitors, awe about the existence of competitors, how to focus and differentiate, and to surpass around the pain points of the market This also makes them rarely caught in pure price competition.
At present, most development misunderstandings in China do not see that the development of 3D printing is not a PK of hardware, but a contest of software strength. Many companies have not focused on the point of obtaining long-term strength to win fierce competition. More often, domestic companies are trapped in the dilemma of providing equipment for prototype companies in order to survive. It is difficult to focus R&D on development-oriented industrialization. A generation of equipment, it is difficult to do a longer-term layout.
In this regard, VELO3D is a software-driven hardware company. This also indicates that in the near future, the hard core strength required by 3D printing companies that can survive on the market, software is an important part of it.
In terms of software control, VELO3D's Sapphire metal AM printer is known for its patented SupportFree process that achieves nearly unsupported product geometric freedom. This process reduces the need for complex channels, shallow overhangs, and low-angle support structures. In terms of process and quality control, VELO3D's solution includes Flow pre-printing software, and Assure quality assurance and control system.
Indeed, the development of VELO3D impacts not only the development ideas of equipment manufacturers.
VELO3D has been approved by 38 patents. Its patent development is all around the market pain points in the original 3D printing application. Taking the patent technology just obtained by VELO3D with regard to the control of airflow, VELO3D has developed a mechanism, at least during the filtering operation or disassembly from the filtering mechanism The inert internal atmosphere around the filter is maintained during the process of the filter, so that during 3D printing, the material carried by the gas is continuously separated from the continuous gas in the circulating gas.
ELO3D has also made meticulous developments in metal powder and recycled metal powder. VELO3D has developed a material conveying system that can resist the gravity transfer of pre-converted materials, such as uninterrupted material distribution through layer distributors and so on.
Production oriented rather than prototype
Jumping over the limitations of the prototype market, the design purpose of the intelligent melting powder bed metal additive manufacturing system developed by Velo3D is to be used for production work, starting from the simulation of the part processing process to generate the processing strategy, and then, through various process control, to To ensure the stability and consistency of quality in the processing of multiple parts.
Rely on software rather than human experience
To ensure the normal operation of the machine, the integrity of the parts and the traceability of the construction process, the Assure quality control system developed by Velo3D faces the needs of efficiency, quality consistency and processing stability in the production field, ensuring the quality of the parts required for mass production. It can detect process anomalies, mark them, and display the required corrective measures to avoid repeated errors.
More scientific and easier
Through multi-sensor-based real-time monitoring and machine algorithms, 3D Science Valley understands that Assure can provide unprecedented traceability of part quality and immediately flags abnormalities when they occur. This reduces differences and provides comprehensive documentation to quickly track the verification of 3D printed parts.
By monitoring the integrity of the 3D printing construction process through the Assure system, verifying the bulk material density, observing the ongoing printing process and verifying the system calibration across multiple production runs, Assure provides the basis for industrialization.
VELO 3D's Assure quality assurance and control system has intuitive charts that enable users to view and interpret the large amounts of data collected during the construction process. According to VELO 3D, this information can help engineers verify the quality of each step in the build process and enable them to make quick decisions when problems arise. Ensuring can help reduce production variances, increase output, and avoid anomalies to ensure consistent additive manufacturing results.
Software-driven industrialization of 3D printing
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the angel investor and board member of VELO3D is the former CEO of Autodesk Carl Bass. According to the market observations of 3D Science Valley, the three 3D printing companies currently supported by Carl Bass are very distinctive and industry disruption. potential. One of the companies from California, USA, Arris Composites, opened a path for the industrialization of carbon fiber composites 3D printing. During the epidemic, it reversed the market and received 48.5 million US dollars (about 340 million yuan) in round B financing. The continuous fiber composite 3D printing production-level application of the market, and Arris Composites was incubated in Carl Bass' personal workshop. The other is to break through the pain points of the current 3D printing data. The new 3D geometric kernel for additive manufacturing from the West Coast startup Dyndrite uses the original mathematical representation (B spline curve, NURBS and B-rep data ) To provide a better additive processing path. By not relying on millions of triangles like STL to define printing, Dyndrite's solution avoids "data inflation" and can improve the quality of printed parts. This means that by eliminating the steps that need to repair the dissipated momentum of the STL, the repeatability is improved and the production speed is increased.
All the ability to surpass competition is built on the basis of software. It can be said that software is engulfing the entire world. According to the market judgment of 3D Science Valley, the application of GPU and CPT will penetrate from modeling and simulation to digital twin technology. To process control and other aspects of the 3D printing process chain, and artificial intelligence algorithms will dominate all aspects of 3D printing.
With the development of 5G infrastructure, the potential of artificial intelligence enabling manufacturing will be fully released. In this regard, in early 2020, Fraunhofer IPT Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT and Swedish mobile network supplier Ericsson jointly developed the concept of "European 5G Industrial Park" to monitor and control 5G sensors in highly complex manufacturing processes, mobile Robots, logistics and multi-site production chains, distributed manufacturing control, blockchain, artificial intelligence and edge cloud computing are all being presented to us in the future.
In terms of 3D printing, the Aachen Additive Manufacturing Center (ACAM) in the European 5G industrial park provides manufacturing companies worldwide with the additive manufacturing expertise accumulated by Aachen's leading scientific research institutions including Fraunhofer and other years, and has passed certification Services, joint R&D services, and professional education services help companies meet the challenges of the application of additive manufacturing technologies.
The pain point is the opportunity. I hope that whether it is VELO3D or Arris Composites, Dyndrite, or the 5G industrial park in Europe and the leading breakthrough and scientific research resources of the Aachen Additive Manufacturing Center (ACAM), it can bring domestic enterprises to develop ideas and development beyond competition path.