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Desktop Metal
Desktop Metal: A rising star of metal AM targets speed, cost and high-volume production Over the past few months it has been hard to avoid hearing about Desktop Metal, Inc. at AM trade shows and in the growing sections of the industrial media. In the following article Terry Wohlers reports on a recent visit to the company’s headquarters. Guided by Ric Fulop, Desktop Metal’s founder and CEO, Wohlers’ initial scepticism is put to rest as he discovers the company’s Studio and Production systems. Together they offer a credible solution to both accessibility to AM technology and the challenges of speed, cost and high-volume production.
In April this year I visited Desktop Metal in Burlington, Massachusetts, a short distance northwest of Boston. Ric Fulop, founder and CEO, was my host. Prior to my arrival, I knew little about what the company was doing. I had bumped into a number of Desktop Metal employees over the past year and a half, but they were disciplined and shared little detail. Based on what little I had heard and knew about Desktop Metal’s technology, I was sceptical prior to my visit. What I saw was enlightening. After spending part of an evening and several hours the following day at the company’s headquarters, I could tell it was developing something special that involved considerable invention and innovation. I saw new and creative ideas being applied to hardware, software, materials, sintering and support structure removal. I could tell that many people at the company had been working very hard and a lot had come together to make it work.
Vol. 3 No. 2 © 2017 Inovar Communications Ltd
The people Desktop Metal, like most other high-tech companies, is largely about technology, yet it is as much about people. Organisations need a leader and a figurehead, and Fulop is that person. When going to dinner,
Fulop told me that he and Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, have shared some of the same investors, so he had got to know him reasonably well. This led, in part, to the 2017 Tesla Model S that we were riding in. I also learned that Fulop founded A123Systems, which had the largest
Fig. 1 The Desktop Metal Production System is described as being a hundred times faster than existing SLM technologies
Metal Additive Manufacturing | Summer 2017
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