WATERTOWN, Mass., Aug. 06, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Markforged, the leading manufacturer of metal and carbon fiber 3D printers, today announced UK-based automotive manufacturing company Dunlop Systems and Components utilized Markforged 3D printer solutions to produce custom tooling for their facility, saving tens of thousands of dollars.

Internal and customer tools would often be outsourced to third-party vendors, and the slightest change would result in significant delays. “You spend all that money and you wait two or three weeks for it to come in, and the customer then phones you up to tell you what they want changed,” says Mark Statham, Production and Engineering Manager at Dunlop Systems and Components. This would, in turn, cause Statham’s team to become a bottleneck.

Markforged’s continuous carbon fiber reinforcing material is a key point of difference and one of the main reasons why customers choose Markforged 3D printers. After witnessing the abilities of the Markforged desktop printer, Statham was inspired. “As soon as I saw what the printers could do I thought, why can’t we do our own tooling?” says Statham.

Since purchasing the printer, the division has seen an increase in tools available, lead times drastically cut, and a significant decrease in costs. Onyx and continuous carbon fiber have been a perfect fit for the company, providing strong, lightweight parts that can be easily printed on the team’s Markforged desktop printer. Statham plans to replace all of his tooling with 3D printed Onyx parts, and has said the company has seen more tooling in the last six months than in the last five years.

When the company was contracted to help with the build of an electric vehicle for a large automotive company, Statham’s team needed to fabricate custom tools for it. The team saved thousands on the tooling alone, simply by using their Markforged printer instead of outsourcing it. “There are parts we would not have even thought about doing and there are parts that we would not have been able to afford to do,” said Statham. “We never say 'no we can't do it', it's like 'yes we can. We’ll print it.'"

Read more on Markforged and Dunlop Systems and Components read the blog and case study.

About Markforged:
Markforged transforms manufacturing with the most affordable 3D metal and carbon fiber printers capable of producing parts tough enough for the factory floor. Engineers, designers, and manufacturing professionals all over the world rely on Markforged metal and composite printers for tooling, fixtures, functional prototyping, and high-value end-use production. Founded in 2013 and based in Watertown, MA, Markforged has about 300 employees globally, with $137 million in both strategic and venture capital. Markforged was recently recognized by Forbes in the Next Billion-Dollar Startups list, and listed as the tenth fastest growing tech company in the US in the 2018 Deloitte Fast 500. To learn more about Markforged, please visit https://markforged.com.

Contact:
Julia Dunlea
Director of Corporate Marketing
415-963-4174
press@markforged.com