RedEye to Join with Other Additive Manufacturing Companies

Stratasys, the supplier of additive manufacturing technology and also owner of additive manufacturing service provider RedEye, announced this week that it intends to acquire two other AM service providers: Solid Concepts and Harvest Technologies. The companies will be joined with RedEye to form a single business unit, Stratasys says. The result will be “one of the largest independent additive manufacturing parts providers in North America,” said Harvest president David K. Leigh in a letter to customers. (The photo above shows RedEye’s production floor.)

All three companies have seen additive processes move from prototyping into production of functional parts. Harvest calls this direct digital manufacturing; its additive manufacturing capabilities are qualified to produce flight-certified parts for both manned and unmanned aircraft, the company says. Solid Concepts recently demonstrated additive manufacturing’s effectiveness at making production-quality parts by growing the components of a working 3D-printed handgun. Meanwhile, Redeye has been thinking about the next step after 3D printing. To expand the range of potential production applications for its 3D printing capabilities, the company has been exploring finishing options.

For more detail about the acquisitions, read Stratasys’s announcement. For a clue to what this might mean, see this article quoting RedEye (long before the acquisitions) about the implications of a company being able to offer a large amount of additive production capacity.