Velo3D expands with new European Technical Center in Augsburg

Velo3D, Inc. (NYSE: VLD), a leading metal additive manufacturing technology company for mission-critical parts, officially inaugurated its European Technical Center in Augsburg, Germany. The center will serve to manage the company’s operations in Europe, host customers for training, and conduct meetings with customers and partners. Velo3D’s European customer success, sales, and support teams will reside in the technology center, which will act as the hub for the company’s efforts in the region and showcase an end-to-end additive manufacturing solution from the company. 3dpbm was present at the ceremony and conducted extensive interviews with CEO Benny Buller and Dirk Rathsack, Managing Director Sales & Technical Sales EMEA (these will be published in the upcoming AM Focus Aerospace eBook in July).

“Three years ago, we shipped our first Sapphire printer to our very first customer and since then, we’ve experienced tremendous growth across all of our key industries,” said Benny Buller, Velo3D Founder and CEO. “Our new Technology Center in Augsburg will support our efforts in expanding our presence in Europe in a similar manner and will feature an additive manufacturing solution capable of printing our customers’ most ambitious designs.”

The new technology center is more than 110 square meters (1,200 square feet) in size, with a lab area featuring a Velo3D Sapphire printer, a showcase of parts that were printed using the company’s technology, offices, and conference rooms for hosting customers and events. The Velo3D European Technical Center facility will be located at the Augsburg Innovations Park in Augsburg, Germany. The opening was commemorated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Velo3D executives, European customers, local government leaders, and other engineers in attendance.

Augsburg was selected for its central location to key regions in Europe, its proximity to Munich, and Velo3D’s existing presence in the region. The Bavaria region of Germany is a major hub for metal AM, with many industry leaders and very large AM adopters based here. The Augsburg Innovations Park, where the Velo3D European Technical Center is based, is an ideal location to generate key synergies with multiple leading organizations. Among others, Fraunhofer IGCV, DLR (the German Space Agency) and Premium AEROTEC.

Velo3D’s stated goal is to bring metal AM into production by offering clients applications that cannot be achieved with other AM technologies, including other metal PBF technologies. The company does this by developing a system that enables support-free manufacturing of complex metal parts, as well as extremely large metal parts (via systems such as the just-released Sapphire XC 1MZ.

Thus, Velo3D’s ideal clients – in Europe as well as in North America – are companies, such as Schoeller Bleckmann Oilfield Technology (SBOT) and Knust-Godwin, that currently offer outsourced manufacturing using fleets of formative and subtractive technologies, operating primarily in advanced segments such as aerospace and energy.