$26 Million Robot Arm: Real 3D Printed Products

so this robot arm started out as a hundred thousand dollar Kickstarter and in just three years sold for 26 million dollars in this video we're going to talk about the story of how that company did it and how 3D printing helped to enable it this is the story of haddington Dynamics and their Dexter robot arm so in 2017 a Kickstarter popped up for a 3D printed robot arm you could purchase a kit or you could purchase a fully assembled robot for about five thousand dollars that robot arm was able to be printed with a standard desktop 3D printer of the time ultimately that Kickstarter ended up raising 108 thousand dollars and it was designed by a number of Engineers down in Nevada who had figured out how to make a very high Precision robot arm while using standard 3D printed Parts made off of standard desktop 3D printers and the way they had done that was kind of interesting number one they had done exceptional mechanical design in order to reinforce the 3D printed parts that were made for the robot but even more than that they had created a very Advanced control system using an fpga super computer that had been designed by them this system allowed them to create a robot arm that was one meter long and cost less than five thousand dollars but could still maintain a Precision of 50 microns which is the thickness of a human hair that's kind of tough to do over time this robot arm would evolve and get a little bit better and It ultimately was ended up selling for eleven thousand dollars per unit and then in 2020 haddington Dynamics was purchased by the acado group which is a British company that focuses on grocery delivery largely and you've probably seen their videos of large warehouses full of robots delivering groceries to all kinds of different cells it's like a beehive and those robots are 3D printed too but that's a story for another day and the encato group purchased Huntington Dynamics in order to use their robot in their fulfillment centers in order to pick objects off the shelves inside of those Fifth Element centers so how is hattington Dynamics able to do this and how did 3D printing really play into it well obviously right at the start 3D printing was an integral part of the robot and kind of a selling point for it they were actually selling kits of the robot so any hobbyist who is technically capable would be able to 3D print parts for the robot arm this was actually a pretty nifty idea because since they were selling the files they were able to get free cash flow with basically zero cost right up front and they were selling them to a certain group of folks who would be interested in that type of an object so they had a very core customer group that was very committed and very interested in what was being done but then they also sold the actual robots themselves which means that they now had a hundred and eight thousand dollars worth of orders that they had to fulfill but they didn't want to build their own print farm at least not right off the bat so they ended up actually reaching out to slant 3D and we ended up producing the first large batches of Dexter robot arm pieces for them and the advantage of that was that number one they did not have to insource any sort of production they were able to give it to us and we were able to take care of it for them but they were also able to have the flexibility that 3D printing allowed they were able to create these very complex geometries that could not be manufactured any other way if that had even been an option but manufacturing it in any other way wouldn't have been an option the Dexter robot had about 20 to 30 individual pieces that had to be produced for it if they had gone with like traditional molding they would have had hundreds of thousands of dollars in molding cost just to make the first batch of Parts let alone the actual production run and if they had made any sort of mistake in that whole process or needed to readjust something in order to compensate for the molds they would have had to pay that all again in order to update change or replace the molds so 3D printing was really an obvious choice because the robots were a very complex mechanism with a lot of pieces and they were working with a baseline fairly small budget for creating such a complex mechanism but since they were using 3D printing they released all of that investment cash and they got rid of all of that risk so unlike most kickstarters since they were lying on printing they were actually able to deliver the product and do it in a timely way not to break but we made sure that they were delivering all of their products on time which happens almost never in kickstarters the first Dexter arms were actually produced in pla which is totally fine because pla is exceptionally rigid so that it could improve the Precision of the robot arm and since this arm was not going to be used in some desert someplace there was no issues that pla could create But ultimately they did end up upgrading it to carbon fiber nylon Parts just because it helped to improve the overall appearance of the robot arm and as it continued to kind of increase in price it helped improve the premium feel of the arm whereas the early arms were very much kind of a hobby maker sort of project but as it evolved and it became a more formal product 3D printing was able to accommodate that because we have access to all of these really Nifty materials especially with nfdm and since they continued to upgrade and continued to improve all of which was not possible with traditional manufacturing they were able to improve the product to such a degree and demonstrate that it was a real viable product that they were able to basically grow 260 times in three years which is pretty darn impressive because it's very rare that you run into a Kickstarter that is funded successfully delivers successfully and then ends up creating a company that is worth millions of dollars but it was possible this time because 3D printing was available it allowed them to get sales quickly it allowed them to avoid all The Upfront capital expenditure of normal production which would have been crippling if they had done it 15 years ago and it allowed them to continue to improve the product so they could ultimately create what was a real company and a real windfall from this product that they had created so the question really kind of comes down to why is printing not used for products more often when it so obviously creates so many benefits that translate into real actual returns for customers for investors and for Founders I don't really know but if you have any questions about why it might be go ahead and comment down below and if you have any parts that need to be mass-produced go ahead and reach out to us through our quoting form on the website slant3d.com let us know if there's other companies that you want us to talk about or other clients as you might have seen that we've been making parts for and we are happy to talk about that a little bit more have a great day everybody [Music]

Channel: Slant 3D

Views: 37,057

Keywords: 3d printer farm, 3d print farm, additive manufacturing business, 3d printing for beginners, 3d print manufacturing, 3d printing 2023, 3d printing farm, product development strategy, coolest 3d printed things, coolest 3d printed products, real world 3d printed products, 3d printed products that sell, best 3d printed products, 3d printing ideas 2023, 3d printing kickstarter, haddington dynamics robot, dexter robot arm, haddington dynamics dexter, 3d printed robots, robotic arm

Id: pSw7d8slIhI

Length: 6min 7sec (367 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023