3-D printing adds new dimension to startups

Entrepreneurs are hoping to create a gold mine out of the innovative technology

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then surely a physical model is worth a thousand pictures.

At the Hong Kong Spring Electronics Fair and ICT Expo held in mid-April, thousands of exhibitors busily tried to garner attention from an even larger group of international dealers. Among them, Wan Li, chief executive officer of a Beijing-based 3-D printing startup, tried to do everything possible to help his company earn its first pot of gold.

On a table at his booth, the 32-year-old entrepreneur carefully arranged a 20-centimeter-tall human statue, a cartoon figure from the Despicable Me movie, a bucket and two delicate rings - all made of resin and created by his company's 3-D printer.

Next to those items stood a cuboid machine wrapped in yellow, transparent plastic. It was easy for people to look through the plastic wall and see the hammer-shaped equipment inside and liquid resin underneath it.

Wan, a Tsinghua University graduate, said the strange-looking machine was a 3-D printer invented by his company. Wan co-founded Beijing Ten Dimensions Co Ltd with three other university alumni at the beginning of this year. The company is dedicated to developing and selling high-resolution 3-D printing systems, at competitive prices, to small and medium-sized enterprises.

"For clients such as designers, a 3-D printer allows them to turn imagination into reality in a very short period," Wan said. Also, compared with words or pictures, a solid product delivers the most information for a designer to send out.

Seeing a huge potential in China's 3-D printing industry, Wan left the private manufacturing company where he was employed a year ago.

He is determined to create affordable industrial 3-D systems. Beijing Ten Dimensions sells professional-grade 3-D printers at $7,000 each, significantly lower than the global industry average of about $79,000.

The technology of 3-D printing, which originated in the 1980s in the United States, can form objects through the deposition of a material, usually layer upon layer, out of 3-D digital data. It is now most commonly used for modeling, prototyping, tooling and short-run production applications.

Chinese investors and institutions have shown strong interest in 3-D printing. The country's 3-D printing sector has gained incredible momentum thanks to media exposure, strengthened public awareness and a favorable development environment promoted by the government and more experienced players.

Because of a natural connection with technology research and development, students and teachers at leading Chinese universities, including Tsinghua, Beihang University and Huazhong University of Sciences and Technology, are emerging as the first group to make serious businesses out of 3-D printing.

According to the China Securities Journal, the number of 3-D printing firms globally stands at about 100, and close to 40 are China-based. University professors, and increasingly graduates, are founders or core team members of many of the firms.

Traditional manufacturers, especially those located in southern China, form the other group that makes up the 3-D printing industry.

Lai Weilian, director of Bondale Electronics Ltd, an electronics company in Huizhou, Guangdong province, said his company has started producing smaller desktop 3-D printers for schools.

The industry usually divides 3-D printers into two categories: industrial systems and personal systems. Most of the personal, or desktop, 3-D printers worldwide are priced below $5,000, and Lai's machines cost even less, at no more than $1,000 per unit.

"Schools buy our systems to demonstrate to students, inspiring the youth to try more innovative things," said Lai. The personal 3-D printer market has a much lower threshold for newcomers as it is built on the RepRap open-source platform, similar to the mobile phone industry's Android platform, which permits players to share code.