Rapid Ready Roundup: RedEye, AM Center, Objet, Lego and Lincoln Logs

In the course of my diligent efforts to keep you good people up to date on the state of additive manufacturing, I come across many interesting news items. I’ll gather them up once every few weeks and present them in a Rapid Ready Roundup (like this one). You can find the last Roundup here.

Lots of announcements in this week’s Rapid Ready Roundup. First, we have RedEye. The Stratasys (read our company profile here) operated service provider has received AS9100 certification. The certification indicates that RedEye meets with the aerospace industry’s requirements for service safety, quality and reliability. Along with being attractive to customers, the certification also reduces 2^nd and 3^rd party audits, and offers access to industry best practices.

Representing the highest levels of quality, achieving AS9100C certification recognizes our commitment to helping the aerospace community bring their products to market faster without compromising integrity. Using real thermoplastics, FDM 3D printing technology offers engineers an attractive option for producing end-use parts in an efficient and cost-effective way. –Richard Garrity, Stratasys vice president of RedEye On Demand

If you happen to be in or near the UK, you’ll soon be able to visit the Mercury Centre’s new additive manufacturing (AM) suite. The suite will open on April 19^th and will offer tours and demonstrations focused on AM. On display will be aerosol jet deposition, metal injection molding, spark plasma sintering and electron beam processing. For those of us not as likely to visit the suite, the fact that more of this type of educational/production centers keep opening is a positive sign of growth for the industry in general.

Next we have Objet (read our company profile here). The company has recently filed with the US SEC to raise up to $75 million in an initial public offering of Class A common stock. J.P.Morgan, Goldman Sachs & Co. and Needham & Co. have agreed to underwrite the offering. Objet had revenues of $121.1 million in 2011 and you can look for them on NASDAQ under ‘OBJT.’

As a kid, how often did you wish you had a way to use your Lego and Lincoln Logs together? The Free Art and Technology Lab (FAT Lab) and Sy-Lab have partnered up to make that wish a reality, using 3D printing. The Universal Construction Kit developed by the two groups enables kids to use Lincoln Logs, K’NEX, LEGO and Tinkertoys in tandem to expand creativity. Free STL files to print out the kit can be found on Thingiverse. You can also find a Rapid Ready look at Lego prototyping here.

Below you’ll find a short video of the Universal Construction Kit.

Sources: Stratasys, Objet, IPMD, PSFK