We received an update from Mosaic Manufacturing.
The Toronto-based company got their start by introducing the Palette multicolor accessory years ago, but now they’re deep into much larger products. These include the Element production 3D printer and the fascinating Array system that combines printers into a small manufacturing system.
The Array was launched a year ago, but the company has spent time tweaking capabilities and adding features based on internal improvements and customer feedback.
This product venture, which was quite surprising for a company that previously had made only a small 3D print accessory, has been very successful. So successful, in fact, that they’ve attracted some major investment.
We were told they recently obtained a huge CA$28M (US$20M) investment. From whom? While the investment round was led by Idealist Capital, they would only tell me it was a “Montreal-based venture company”.
Mosaic Manufacturing representatives told me they intend on putting this capital towards expanding production of their Array and Element systems, as well as growing their sales and distribution networks.
We were told they currently have around 65 staff, which is quite a growth for the former startup company.
What does all this mean for the well-regarded Palette? It seems that the shift to industrial 3D printing means they are “phasing out” marketing of the Palette as a standalone device. Instead the Palette technology will be knitted into their Array and Element systems. In other words, their systems will be likely be able to 3D print multimaterial objects.
This is not an unreasonable approach, because there have been quite a few alternative multicolor solutions for desktop 3D printers emerge in the past two years.
I asked about their unusual textile system, which we first saw a couple of years ago, but haven’t heard much about lately. The technology is able to print labels that can easily be heat pressed into fabric. This is ideal for certain industries, such as putting names on the back of sports jerseys, and similar.
There’s another quite interesting twist to this technology: it’s carbon friendly. Let’s look at a typical production of embossed T-shirts, where shirts are shipped to a printing facility, printed and then shipped back to the buyer. With this technology it’s possible to simply print the labels and ship them — at lower expense and CO2 generation — to the buyer, who heat presses them without shipping shirts around the globe.
It’s also possible to quickly print and ship labels to replace mistakes and provide extras after a major order. This technology could be of considerable interest to certain garment operations.
Mosaic Manufacturing told me that this technology should be fully launched “later this year”, and that’s not too far away.
