3DEO Takes the Gold in 2020 LEAP Awards for Additive Manufacturing
Metal additive manufacturing technology company 3DEO, Los Angeles, California, has won a Gold Medal in Additive Manufacturing from Design World’s Leadership in Engineering Achievement Program (LEAP) Awards. More than a hundred entries were said to have been received for the annual competition, which showcases innovative and forward-thinking products serving the design engineering space.
Winners were chosen by an independent judging panel of fourteen engineering and academic professionals. On 3DEO’s winning technology, one of the judges commented, “To integrate the CNC milling into the process should really help 3D metal parts move from prototype to production.” The award recognized the company’s ability to scale metal AM to volumes which can compete with traditional manufacturing methods such as CNC machining and metal injection molding (MIM).
“Recognizing the nonexistence of high-volume production in the industry, we founded the company specifically to break into high-volume production,” explained Payman Torabi, PhD, chief technology officer at 3DEO. “The entire 3DEO team is honored to receive such a prestigious award and be recognized for our hard work over the years.” Rather than sell its AM machines, 3DEO’s business model is to use its own technology in-house to build an automated end-to-end industrial platform, offering customers access to its platform to purchase additively manufactured production parts. It has shipped over 300,000 production parts to date, including a reported 35,000 parts shipped in a single week last month. Many of its production customers are said to be in annual production quantities of more than 50,000 pieces per year.
Matt Petros, PhD, CEO of 3DEO, commented, “While it is true that we are shipping a lot of parts, we are really just getting started on the path to production. I think that is what is most exciting about 3DEO today.”
“Building an end-to-end production line took time to fully develop the technology stack, which includes 3D printing, automation, robotics, software integration, and machine learning,” he commented. “3DEO is more than a parts company. It’s more than a metal 3D printing company. It’s a digital industrial platform poised to transform manufacturing.” “Expect to see very big things from us in 2021. We are breaking into new industries, taking down larger and larger orders, and starting to compete head-on with metal injection molding from a cost and quality perspective,” added Petros. “When you can offer customers all of the game-changing advantages of 3D printing with similar pricing and quality as MIM, it’s a manufacturing revolution in the making.”