The new Venus de Milo and some more prosaic industrial parts produced via 3D printing
Matteo Rigamonti, who founded Pixart Printing in 1994, has reported strong growth in a fledgling venture that offers 3D printing and CNC machining services online.
Established just over two years ago, the online platform is called Weerg.com and offers automated 3D printing from uploaded CAD files. By the end of 2017 the business had grown by a factor of 10 and has made significant investment in production equipment, including three recently-installed HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D printers at its site in Merghera, Italy. These are complemented by 10 Hermie workcentres for CNC machining.
Mr Rigamonti, who sold his final stake in Pixart to Cimpress in 2016, believes that this choice of equipment offers industrial standards.
He added, ‘The demand for 3D works exceeded our expectations. We have recorded an increasing number of very different orders from users attentive to the speed of delivery times, which made it necessary to immediately increase production capacity.
‘The performance of the Jet Fusion 4200 printer fully met our expectations and the machine proved to be incredibly fast and productive with very competitive costs, even for the production of runs of up to 5000 pieces. We are convinced that thanks to this technology, 3D printing, limited so far to ludic [playful] or experimental uses, is on the right track to become concretely useful and functional.’
