PrintFoam 2023

The New Year is here, whether we’re ready or not. Our New Year’s Resolution? It’s basically our mission: we’re going to print foam this year, and we’re going to do it in a big way. So let’s clarify that: we’re getting ready to print metric tons of foam this year.

And, frankly, we’re going to do everything in a big way, because 3D printed foam can be high-volume, large-format, and – okay, the bubbles are small, and the resolution precise, so not everything is going to be big. But those little aspects are little in a big way!

Catching up with PrintFoam’s founder, Matthew Pearlson, we also gain additional perspective on what 2023 could mean for PrintFoam and where the differentiation is for this new approach to foam.

Matthew Pearlson

Founder and CEO, PrintFoam

3D Printed Foam Doesn’t Exist (Commercially)

Louder for the people in back: the additive manufacturing industry currently does not offer real foam. Not like we’re approaching it.

Sure, you can find a lot of “3D printed foam” out there… but it’s not the same as what you might find from the traditional foam market, and not what end-use foam applications are demanding.

Dr. David Walker – Co-Founder of Azul 3D and the Executive Chairperson of the Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing Alliance – summed up the market demand last spring in response to PrintFoam’s tech announcement:

“Everyone in the field is attempting to mimic the behavior of traditional foams using plastic lattices produced by computational models. These models keep telling engineers to generate lattices with smaller struts and smaller unit-cells…In essence, the computer is screaming at the engineer to stop what they're doing and use a foam for the application. As a community, we haven't been listening and acting on this.”

That is: lattices are not foams, no matter how small the cross-sections might be.

Don’t get us wrong – there’s incredible capability in these materials out there today, and for sure the market has taken notice. I wore my Carbon-made Adidas Ultra 4D shoes to Formnext 2022 and have never had fewer foot issues after walking the world’s biggest 3D printing conference. Desktop Metal’s new soft foam is definitely interesting (and is indeed foam), and the automotive market appears keen on exploring this technology to prototype new designs. EOS’ Digital Foam has picked up plenty of well-merited interest.

But – there’s still a perception out there that all these things might be true 3D printed foams and…for the most part, they’re simply not. Where other technologies are capable to an extent of 3D printing true foams, they see notable limitations in terms of material properties and throughput for scaling up.

We’re looking at it like champagne.

If it doesn’t come from the Champagne region of France, it’s just sparkling wine.

If it doesn't come from the PrintFoam region of 3D printing, it’s just sparkling lattice.

PrintFoam’s New Class of Foam Materials

Foam – real foam – opens up new markets that aren’t served today via additive manufacturing.

“We do this in two ways,” Matthew explains of the process he originated. “First, we offer a new class of materials that doesn’t really exist in the marketplace. We are unique because we print our materials in a foamed state. This frees us up to make hard or soft, squishy closed-cell foams.”

Today’s foam 3D printing availability is limited to soft foam that can expand after printing. Hard foam, though, has already solidified and so cannot expand further. PrintFoam can make soft foam and hard foam. Other “foam 3D printing” is, again, largely more of a lattice concept. That’s not foam. But PrintFoam can also make lattice structures out of real foam, taking that digital promise to the next level.

“We all have about the same resolution limits in 3D printing, in the hundreds of micron range, in terms of minimum feature size,” Matthew continues. “When you take that resolution to a real printed part, we both have a part with the same minimum wall thickness, but a part made from foam can be half as light or more as a regular lattice.”

The second point of differentiation Matthew had noted comes down to the tagline on the previous PrintFoam logo:

“Foam makes parts lighter, faster, and less expensive,” Matthew notes, “which allows us to access a larger pool of applications. Some of those are larger than the whole resin 3D printing pool we know today.”

To lay these areas out:

• Faster – There’s less material to cure

• Lighter – Doesn’t need as much support in the structure, so less fighting gravity

• Cheaper – Less material means 50% material savings

And then there’s that satisfying squish:

PrintFoam 2023

So what’s the plan for 2023 (or, as I prefer to call it, 2023D)?

We have some huge plans in sight! Here’s what we’re looking forward to this year:

Billion-Dollar Beachhead Opportunity

We’re focusing on a huge opportunity, with $100+ million per year in sight.

We’re not content to hang our hats on a single opportunity, as there’s a big, wide world of potential for high-speed, high-volume, high-resolution foam out there. But we have more inbound interest than we have bodies to handle.

Research

We’re excited to kick off a multi-phase research agreement with a strategic customer in the industrial services space. This will address a major global market – and aligns well with our core values as a company.

In this research, we’ll be leveraging materials and additive manufacturing expertise to develop new 3D foam bio-resins (that is, resins with bio-sourced materials).

We’ll also be exploring the potential to retrofit existing hardware where that approach makes sense for given applications like prototyping. 

Hardware Advances

Further, we’ll be advancing our new proprietary hardware – because our first beachhead customer requires thousands of tons of material for their application.

That’s a good place to take a quick breather to remind us: 3D printing resins are a small part of a much larger industrial UV curables world. Think adhesives, graphic arts inks, coatings, even nail polish. These are all substantially larger application areas for resins than 3D printing.

We need new hardware because this is a massive market to serve. Just one project that we’re eyeing triples the size of the 3D printing resin market.

The whole market.

All of the 3D printing resin market. With one project.

That market is already poised to see a major CAGR in the next five years, per the Wohlers Report and other highly-trusted resources. But just think what a single project tripling the already fast-growing market could mean.

“The new hardware leverages a novel optical patterning technology and print methodology for a high-throughput production system that can handle high-viscosity materials, and high degrees of automation,” Matthew notes. “We are addressing the scaling problem of resolution, size, and speed; this tech allows you to have all three, instead of trading off.”

PrintFoam has its patent-pending (2022) proof-of-concept benchtop system in place, as well as the front-end engineering for a larger system and a production system. This is all complete with professional machine builders for budgetary quotes and timelines.

Growth

To meet all these New Year, New Goals plans, PrintFoam continues to seek additional investment.

PrintFoam is open to including the right strategic or financial investors in our process if they are a good fit with our mission, values, ambitions, and interest in tackling the toughest manufacturing challenges of our lifetime.

Reach out to matthew@printfoam.com.

Investment funds will be used to build out our applications engineering and business development teams so we can continue to support our first beachhead customers, and begin other customers on the PrintFoam journey.