3D Systems Expands in Rock Hill with 200,000 Square Foot Facility Lease

It appears as if 3D Systems believes that their company will see continued rapid growth. The company today announced a 10 year lease for a massive 200,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The facility will consolidate many Rock Hill operations, and allow the company to concentrate on engineering and R&D in the old facility. Further details on this move can be found here: http://3dprint.com/11750/3d-systems-...ill-expansion/

Below is a Google Street view map of the new 200,000 sq. foot facility:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...1-1024x562.jpg

They know that the market is literally exploding with innovation as well as some pretty staggering adoption rate trends. Stratasys is firing on all cylinders, but 3D systems should remain right up there with them from a manufacturing printer standpoint. As for their consumer level desktop devices, they have a far way to go to catch up with Makerbot in my opinion. I do have a feeling we will be seeing something new from 3D systems for consumer within the next 6 months. They know they need to compete here as well.

I think that analysts are drastically underestimating the true potential and amount of money which is going to be made from desktop printers. I think ultimately it will be SLA printers though and not FDM.

Actually the 3D printing systems aré experimenting the same as the inkjet printers 10 years ago, there used to be really crapy inkjet printers and if you wanted it a nice print you have to spend your cash on a láser Xerox or brother printer, both of them really expensive and only aforable for the big companys, but now for some people Its unbeliveable that you were to print in the confort of your home.

From now to the next 5 years, most of the people Will have at léast access to a 3D printer or a 3D printer service near their homes, lets just hope the number of materials increase and give us more options to créate anything that we want. Cheers

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Originally Posted by bshadown

Actually the 3D printing systems aré experimenting the same as the inkjet printers 10 years ago, there used to be really crapy inkjet printers and if you wanted it a nice print you have to spend your cash on a láser Xerox or brother printer, both of them really expensive and only aforable for the big companys, but now for some people Its unbeliveable that you were to print in the confort of your home.

From now to the next 5 years, most of the people Will have at léast access to a 3D printer or a 3D printer service near their homes, lets just hope the number of materials increase and give us more options to créate anything that we want. Cheers

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Do we all remember impact printers? then bubble, ink, laser jets?

As Far as I see it, we are at the dot matrix phase now, what took 15 years in the printing industry will take half that in the 3D printing industry not only due to better tech, but availability and open source. I still can't believe I see people laughing at 3D printing and saying it's just a passing fad, if they took a closer look they would realise it's going to be bigger than sliced bread.

Impact printers??? Damn geoff i dont Wana call you old, but when in the hell that ever existed????? I remember the old brother/Xerox láser photocopies machines back on the 90, other than that im lost

PS: dont slap me with the whip Plz, :D:D:D Hahahah

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Originally Posted by bshadown

Impact printers??? Damn geoff i dont Wana call you old, but when in the hell that ever existed?????

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Late 1970s all the way to the late 80s, better known as dot matrix. In close competition with the dial-up modem for most annoying sounding piece of technology.

I guess you never used a VIC20 or Commodore 64 either.

That antique music playing thing in Guardians of the Galaxy was called a "cassette tape", they were also used to hold programs for the Commodore 64 before we came up with the floppy disk.
If there are people here that won't remember floppy disks either then I'm gonna feel really old.

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Originally Posted by bshadown

Impact printers??? Damn geoff i dont Wana call you old, but when in the hell that ever existed?

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Impact printers still exist and are still made new. Nowadays, they're used for filling out triplicate forms automatically.

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Originally Posted by Feign

I guess you never used a VIC20 or Commodore 64 either.
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No, and no, i never used a commodore 64 i did start with Windows 3.1 i think and some unknown machines, they where white and called Alaska here in México, and believe it or not, i did used the floppy disck and cassete when i Was a kid, i even remember the 5" floppy disk as well

200,000 Square is quite much. I wonder how many machine they produce per hour!`?

There is an obscene amount of money to be made from an apple or google 3d shop.

But for that they'll need closed secure systems.

And that's both a good and bad thing.

Think how much money can be made from a simple mobile phone app (are the angry birds writers billionaires yet ? won't be long).

Won't be long before good 3d designers will be able to flog their wares on google 3d.
Said files will be directly downloaded to a shiny box in a room in your house and a short while later you'll be able to remove and actual tactile thing !
You'll pay through the teeth for the closed system cartridges, and emjoy doing so.

And for the record - I started on a zx81 with an awesome 16k expansion pack !
Well i say awesome it used to overheat and cut out.

Hated dot matric printers. Though a can of wd40 would make the ribbons run a lot longer than the manufacturers wanted :-)

The fully locked down commercialised tied into a distribution market is coming - save your best designs and in afew years they might make you rich :-)

Makes you wonder if 3dsystems are developing their magic box yet - if not they will be.

I'm pretty sure there's an office in stratasys hq where closed system software and hardware is also being designed.

The first company that closes a deal with google to team up a 3d file distribution network with a home idiot-proof printer will basically start printing their own money.

And it'll be google not apple. Apple stopped innovating with the ipad.

Current models STILL don't have: usb ports, sd card slots, hdmi ports or os deep back or menu buttons. The cheapest android tablet on the amrket has all those things.

Apple stopped innovating long before jobs died. But google not only sold their souls to the devil, they managed to slide a few clauses of their own into the agreement and now own 75% of hell.