#3DStartup: 3D Spark Helps Companies Cut Costs and Waste in Production

The adoption of additive manufacturing in companies is steadily increasing. More and more companies are interested in taking advantage of 3D printing, but there is often uncertainty about choosing the right technology, materials and software. Spark 3D, a startup based in Hamburg, Germany, has developed a software solution that helps companies find ways to cut costs, shorten delivery times and reduce CO2 emissions in production. In addition, 3D Spark’s platform ensures that companies can benefit from an automated assessment of their 3D printed parts to identify an optimal product development process. We spoke with co-founder and co-CEO Ruben Meuth to learn more about 3D Spark’s work.

3DN: Could you introduce yourself and your connection to 3D printing?

I’ve always been fascinated by how things are made. For example, when a milling head goes through metal like butter or sparks fly during spot welding in a fully automated car body production line, and the end result is a product that people love, that’s great. 3D printing as the “supreme discipline of manufacturing” was then the logical consequence for me. As early as my master’s thesis, I developed an initial software prototype to automatically select the most suitable 3D printing process based on component requirements. Later, as Head of Business Development at the renowned Fraunhofer Institute for Additive Production Technologies (IAPT), I frequently heard sentences in many discussions with industry such as: “We are convinced about 3D printing, but we don’t know where to start. We don’t have the capacity to compare various processes and materials with each other per use case and to benchmark them for manufacturability and especially costs. As a result, we are losing out on major cost-saving potential.”

The 3D Spark team: Dr.-Ing. Fritz Lange, Dr.-Ing. Arnd Struve, M.Sc. Ruben Meuth (Left to Right)

We wanted to solve this problem, and this only became possible thanks to the expertise of Dr.-Ing. Arnd Struve and Dr.-Ing. Fritz Lange, who were simultaneously working on their doctorates at the IAPT in the field of software development for lightweight construction, design automation and heat sinks for 3D printing. We then developed precursors of our current software for large industrial customers. When the feedback was: “That’s brilliant, we want to industrialize that,” we said: “Let’s do it!” and spun off with 3D Spark.