RAPID Happenings

Detroit has long been known for its automotive manufacturing might, but this week Rock City is hosting a different kind of manufacturing power. RAPID 2014, running alongside the Big M, showed Detroit the best of what advanced manufacturing has to offer. Almost every recognizable name in additive manufacturing showed up for RAPID 2014, packing the showroom floor.

Desktop Engineering was present in force, including your trusty AM contributing editor (that’s me). We spoke with a number of different companies, and while I can’t report on everything that was said, here are some tidbits of today’s conversations with Mcor Technologies.

Mcor Technologies met with us and showed off its new International Color Consortium (ICC) improvement for the Iris. By basing any color scheme on the ICC model, Mcor makes it possible to more accurately reproduce the exact colors required for a print.

Mcor co-founder Conor MacCormack holds an example of the company’s new FLEX, which allows for flexible 3D printed paper prints.

“Ask any creative or marketing professional: accurate colour matters,” said Dr. Conor MacCormack, co-founder and CEO of Mcor Technologies. “That’s why standards exist, and why we are the first 3D printer manufacturer to embrace them. A gram is a gram and a meter is a meter anywhere on the planet because of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Likewise, a company’s logo will be the same colour on the computer screen as on a model 3D printed by the Mcor IRIS because of our ICC profile. The result is a truly what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) experience.”

In addition to the new color process, Mcor is launched an infiltrate named Mcor FLEX which is meant to work with any object printed on a Mcor system. As you may have guessed from the name, Mcor FLEX gives some bend and bounce to Mcor’s signature paper AM process. Objects treated with FLEX are flexible and watertight.

Finally for Mcor, I received confirmation that the recent investments into the company will be used for expansion of services (including more people on the ground in the US) and research and development. Some of that R&D will be put toward building a smaller Mcor printer (perhaps desktop sized?) that is meant to appeal to small businesses, hobbyists, and educators. Look forward to more information from RAPID 2014 in the days ahead.

In the meantime, below you’ll find a video featuring Conor MacCormack.